Lalit Arora, Reena Arora, Jagmohan Singh and Harpreet Kaur
Low back pain is a common problem, with a lifetime prevalence of 60-90% and an annual incidence of 5%. It becomes chronic in 40% cases. The present study was aimed to investigate the efficacy of McKenzie exercises and lumbar stabilization exercises in management of chronic low back pain. Material and Methods: The study is single (investigator) blind randomized controlled trial. A total of 30 subjects aged between 25 and 50 years were randomly assigned to two groups. One group received McKenzie exercises along with standard physical therapy and the other received lumbar stabilization exercises along with standard physical therapy. Subjects were evaluated before treatment and 4 weeks after treatment. Visual Analogue Scale and Oswestry Low Back Pain Questionnaires were used to measure pain and functional disability respectively. Analysis showed that there was significant improvement in visual analogue scale and Oswestry low back pain questionnaire score in both the groups after the treatment period (p<0.0001). On the other hand, the lumbar stabilization group also demonstrated significant improvement in both these outcomes (p<0.0001).The lumbar stabilization group demonstrated significantly more improvement in visual analogue scale score than McKenzie exercises group (p=0.040). However, no significant difference was found in Oswestry low back pain questionnaire score between both the groups. This study showed that both the exercise regimes are beneficial in patients with chronic low back pain.
