Abstract
Lee AS, Cholewicki J, Reeves NP, Zazulak BT, Mysliwiec LW. Comparison of trunk proprioception
between patients with low back pain and healthy controls.
Objective
To determine whether proprioceptive impairments exist in patients with low back pain
(LBP). We hypothesized that patients with LBP would exhibit larger trunk proprioception
errors than healthy controls.
Design
Case-control study.
Setting
University laboratory.
Participants
24 patients with nonspecific LBP and 24 age-matched healthy controls.
Interventions
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
We measured trunk proprioception in all 3 anatomical planes using motion perception
threshold, active repositioning, and passive repositioning tests.
Results
LBP patients had significantly greater motion perception threshold than controls (P<.001) (1.3±0.9° vs 0.8±0.6°). Furthermore, all subjects had the largest motion perception
threshold in the transverse plane (P<.001) (1.2±0.7° vs 1.0±0.8° for all other planes averaged). There was no significant
difference between LBP and healthy control groups in the repositioning tasks. Errors
in the active repositioning test were significantly smaller than in the passive repositioning
test (P=.032) (1.9±1.2° vs 2.3±1.4°).
Conclusions
These findings suggest that impairments in proprioception may be detected in patients
with LBP when assessed with a motion perception threshold measure.
Key Words
List of Abbreviations:
ICC (intraclass correlation coefficient), LBP (low back pain)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Footnotes
Supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant no. R01 AR051497).
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
