Effectiveness of Lumbar Stabilization Exercises for Reducing Chronic Low Back Pain and Improving Quality-of-Life

[Purpose] Therapeutic exercise for chronic low back pain is one of the most important conservative treatments. Recently, lumbar stabilization exercise focused on deep trunk muscles has attracted considerable attention. This study investigated the effectiveness of lumbar stabilization exercises for treating CLBP. [Subjects] The subjects were 18 patients with CLBP. CLBP was defined as pain that persisted for more than 3 months. [Methods] The therapeutic exercises involved the abdominal drawing-in maneuver (hereafter referred to as "drawing-in") and prone kneeling (hereafter referred to as "hand-knee"). The exercises were performed during a 3-month intervention period. Pain was evaluated using a Visual Analog Scale (hereafter referred to as "VAS"), while quality-of-life (hereafter referred to as "QOL") was estimated using the Japanese Orthopaedic Association Back Pain Examination Questionnaire (hereafter referred to as "JOABPEQ"). Pain and QOL were assessed prior to the intervention (T0), and at one (T1), three (T3), and six months (T6) after the intervention. The Steel-Dwass test was used to investigate differences between values prior to and after performance of the therapeutic exercise regime. Significance was defined as p