Articles: low-back-pain.
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Low back pain is one of the complaints most commonly seen in the clinical setting. Correctly or incorrectly, these patients are often given the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, disk herniation, or some other label. ⋯ Therefore, in order to fully evaluate and treat a patient with low back pain, it is necessary to consider and address these soft tissue conditions. This paper reviews soft tissue causes of low back pain and discusses how they are most appropriately diagnosed and managed.
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Prospective observational study. ⋯ These results show that patients with chronic low back pain should be encouraged to continue working up until surgery.
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Sex differences in cardiac and autonomic response to clinical and experimental pain in LBP patients.
Rehabilitation professionals are currently using heart rate (HR) in order to assess the sincerity of effort in certain evaluations. It has been shown that a relation exists between HR and pain but no study has measured cardiac response during both clinical and experimental pain among a patient population using an intra-subject design. Thirty patients with low back pain (LBP) participated in this study including 16 men. ⋯ These results suggest that pain induced during a clinical evaluation will produce a significant HR augmentation. However, heart rate variability analysis showed greater sympathetic cardiac regulation for men. The sex differences observed in this study call for caution when interpreting HR during pain assessment.
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J Spinal Disord Tech · Oct 2006
Positional MRI changes in supine versus sitting postures in patients with degenerative lumbar spine.
Back pain is associated with a degree of alteration in the alignment and movement of the lumbar spine. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the degree of lumbar segmental degeneration affects sagittal changes in the lumbar spine as it shifts from the supine to the sitting (load-bearing) posture. ⋯ We have found that the changes in the segmental motion were related to the degree of degeneration. With positional MRI, we were able to demonstrate changes in healthy and degenerative discs in the weight-bearing position. More similar studies are needed to understand the complex kinematics of the lumbar spine.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Material handling performance of patients with chronic low back pain during functional capacity evaluation: a comparison between three countries.
Functional Capacity Evaluations (FCEs) are batteries of tests designed to measure patients' ability to perform work-related activities. Although FCEs are used worldwide, it is unknown how patients' performances compare between countries or settings. This study was performed to explore similarities and differences in FCE performance of patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP) between three international settings that utilize the same FCE protocol. ⋯ Considerable differences were observed between settings in maximum weight handled on the various FCE items. Future FCE research should examine the effects of a number of potentially influential factors, including variability in evaluator judgements across settings, the evaluator-patient interaction and patients' expectations of the influence of FCE results on disability compensation.