Movement control tests of the low back; evaluation of the difference between patients with low back pain and healthy controls

doi:10.1186/1471-2474-9-170

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Volume 9

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Kool J
de Bruin ED
Airaksinen O

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Research article

Movement control tests of the low back; evaluation of the difference between patients with low back pain and healthy controls

Hannu Luomajoki¹^,2^,3 , Jan Kool³ , Eling D de Bruin⁴ and Olavi Airaksinen²^,5

¹Physiotherapie Reinach, 5734 Reinach, Switzerland

²University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland

³Institute of Physiotherapy, Department of Health, Zürich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland

⁴Institute of Human Movement Sciences and Sport, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

⁵Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, University Hospital of Kuopio, Finland

author email corresponding author email

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2008, 9:170doi:10.1186/1471-2474-9-170


Published:	24 December 2008

Abstract

Background

To determine whether there is a difference between patients with low back pain and healthy controls in a test battery score for movement control of the lumbar spine.

Methods

This was a case control study, carried out in five outpatient physiotherapy practices in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Twelve physiotherapists tested the ability of 210 subjects (108 patients with non-specific low back pain and 102 control subjects without back pain) to control their movements in the lumbar spine using a set of six tests. We observed the number of positive tests out of six (mean, standard deviation and 95% confidence interval of the mean). The significance of the differences between the groups was calculated with Mann-Whitney U test and p was set on <0.05. The effect size (d) between the groups was calculated and d>0.8 was considered a large difference.

Results

On average, patients with low back pain had 2.21(95%CI 1.94–2.48) positive tests and the healthy controls 0.75 (95%CI 0.55–0.95). The effect size was d = 1.18 (p < 0.001). There was a significant difference between acute and chronic (p < 0.01), as well as between subacute and chronic patient groups (p < 0.03), but not between acute and subacute patient groups (p > 0.7).

Conclusion

This is the first study demonstrating a significant difference between patients with low back pain and subjects without back pain regarding their ability to actively control the movements of the low back. The effect size between patients with low back pain and healthy controls in movement control is large.