The Short-Term Effect of Lumbar Positional Distraction

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that positional distraction provides immediate relief of unilateral leg pain suspected to be caused by lumbar-nerve root irritation. Thirty subjects with true neurological signs were randomly assigned to a treatment group or control group. The tre...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of manual & manipulative therapy Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 213 - 221
Main Authors Mitchell, Ulrike H., Wooden, Michael J., McKeough, D. Michael
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Taylor & Francis 01.10.2001
Subjects
LOW BACK PAIN
POSITIONAL DISTRACTION
RADICULOPATHY
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that positional distraction provides immediate relief of unilateral leg pain suspected to be caused by lumbar-nerve root irritation. Thirty subjects with true neurological signs were randomly assigned to a treatment group or control group. The treatment group received positional distraction for five minutes and the control group lay in side-lying for the same amount of time. Pain intensity, pain location, and SLR test height data was taken pre- and post-test. Statistical analysis was completed with the Wilcoxin-signed rank test for the data of pain intensity and with the paired sample t-test for the SLR height. The treatment group was found to have significantly less pain, more centralization of pain, and an increase in SLR test height (p-values of 0.001, 0.006, and 0.005 respectively). The control group showed no significant change (p-values of 0.506, 0.480, 0.884).
ISSN:1066-9817
2042-6186
DOI:10.1179/106698101790819707