Abstract
Objective
To study the immediate effect of posteroanterior mobilization on back pain and the
associated biomechanical changes in the lumbar spine.
Design
An experimental between-group study.
Setting
A biomechanics laboratory.
Participants
Subjects with low back pain (n=19) and healthy subjects (n=20).
Interventions
Grade III posteroanterior mobilization (3 cycles of 60s) was applied at the L4 level
in people with or without back pain on 1 occasion.
Main Outcome Measures
Pain intensity, active lumbar range of motion, the magnitude of the posteroanterior
mobilization loads, bending stiffness of the lumbar spine, and the lordotic curvature
of the lumbar spine before and after 3 cycles of posteroanterior mobilization.
Results
The magnitude of pain of the patients was found to decrease significantly after posteroanterior
mobilization treatment. There was also a significant decrease in the bending stiffness
of the lumbar spine of the patients, which was derived from the posteroanterior load
and the associated change in spine curvature. The stiffness was restored to a level
that was similar to that of the asymptomatic subjects. A strong correlation was found
between the magnitude of pain and the bending stiffness of the spine before (r=.89) and after posteroanterior mobilization (r=.98).
Conclusions
Posteroanterior mobilization was found to bring about immediate desirable effects
in reducing spinal stiffness and the magnitude of back pain. The restoration of the
mechanical properties of the spine may be a possible mechanism that explains the improvement
in pain after manual therapy.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
CI (confidence interval), ICC (intraclass correlation coefficient), LBP (low back pain), PA (posteroanterior)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 26, 2012
Footnotes
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
© 2013 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
