Measuring treatment effects on repetitive lifting for patients with chronic low back pain : speed, style, and coordination

The purpose of this study was to determine changes in the amount of work performed and lifting speed, style, and coordination during a repetitive dynamic-lifting task for patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP) after an intensive 3 1/2-week pain rehabilitation program. Subjects included 57 CLBP patients and an age- and gender-matched control group (n = 57). Patients' work indices increased by 71%, but remained significantly less than those observed for controls. Similarly, their lifting speed also increased significantly after treatment, but remained slower than the lifting speed of controls. Patients' posttreatment coordination indices, however, were not significantly different from those of controls. This finding suggests that treatment effectively normalized the dynamic lifting motion used by the patients. These findings, along with the basic kinematic patterns developed in this study, have important implications for determining improvements in functional capacity in the treatment of patients with CLBP.