Low Back Pain Case Studies

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C.A. is one of my Pro Bono patients who came to the clinic primarily for her headache and neck pain. During her last treatment section with the other SPT, she reported her willingness to treat the low back pain. Therefore, during my treatment section, I assessed her low back pain and continued the treatment for her neck pain and headache. After discussing her case with the other SPT and talking with the patient, I noticed that she is a chronic pain patient with poor compliance to the home exercise programs. So I searched the literatures for the proper exercises specifically targeted her impairments.
Low back pain
The study done by Dr. Risch and her colleagues demonstrated that an isometric lumbar extension exercise significantly reduced pain
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because the special tests for herniated disc and SI problem were negative, and her lumbar extensor strength was 2/5. The participants in the study had a low back pain history for average of 8 years, which was similar as to C.A.’s case. Considering that she needed to sit for 12 hours for her work, I modified the exercise position to improve her compliance. For her case, I used a prone extension exercise for isometric contraction of the lumbar extensors. Since she had a crouched posture, the extension position would also help for stretching her chest. I advised her to incorporate this exercise to her daily routines by doing it before getting to bed and after getting up in the morning. One week later, though she reported not able to do the HEP every day, her pain decreased and lumbar extensor strength increased to 3/5. Education about chronic pain mechanism and the importance of exercise were also provided to improve her compliance to …show more content…
A study done by Dr. Ren and his group found that an elevation of pillow height was linked with an significantly increase of the pressure of the cranial and cervical regions as well as changing the cervical spine alignment, which might affect sleep quality and neck pain. Ten healthy subjects participated in the study. They were required to lie on a cervical pillow with different elevator mat from 110 mm to 170mm. The pressure distribution on the pillow was measured by a pressure sensitive mat under the pillow, and a computer simulated human body model was constructed to assess the displacement of cervical vertebra alignment under different height of pillows. The results indicated that average and peak pressures on the cranial and cervical region increased with increased height of the pillow. An anterior shift and an overall extension of the cervical spine were observed with the increase of pillow height, which changed the normal cervical spine