A research team at Kio University conducted an intervention using patient education and exercise guidance for patients with chronic low back pain. showed possibilities.
The kinesiophobia (fear of moving the body) caused by low back pain disturbs the movement of the trunk during work (impaired trunk motor control), resulting in a greater load on the lower back and lower back pain. This can lead to chronic symptoms.Patient education and exercise guidance based on the neurophysiology of pain are considered useful interventions for kinesiophobia in patients with such low back pain.However, until now, changes in kinesiophobia and trunk motor control disorders caused by a series of interventions, improvements in low back pain symptoms, and their temporal relationships have not been verified.
Therefore, in this study, we intervened in a worker with chronic low back pain who complained, "I don't feel much pain when lifting heavy objects, but I'm afraid to move my back." A detailed assessment was made of trunk movement and other low back pain symptoms.
As a result, the intervention improved kinesiophobia and sluggishness of trunk movements, and also improved low back pain symptoms, but the trunk movement control disorder (discordance of movement) remained unchanged.Furthermore, after the follow-up period (approximately 8 months after the intervention), a similar tendency was shown, and finally exacerbation of pain intensity was observed.In other words, it was suggested that even with a series of interventions, it is difficult to improve motor control disorders, and that continuing to work with residual motor control disorders may eventually reignite low back pain symptoms.
As future developments, it is desired to clarify the factors behind the motor control impairment and to develop an approach to fundamentally eliminate the motor control impairment.