GROSS MYOFASCIAL RELEASE OF TRUNK WITH LEG PULL TECHNIQUE ON LOW BACK PAIN WITH RADICULOPATHY – A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL
Description
Background: Lower Back Pain (LBP) with radiculopathy is a potentially more serious form of mechanical low back pain. Paucity of literature exists about effect of gross myofascial release (MFR) technique for management of LBP. Hence, the study aimed to evaluate the effect of gross MFR when given as adjunct to conventional physical therapy in subjects with low back pain with radiculopathy. Methods: Forty subjects (n=40) clinically diagnosed with LBP with radiculopathy were enrolled and randomly allocated to either the control group (n=20) or experimental group (n=20). Control group and experimental group received 5 sessions of conventional physical therapy and gross MFR of trunk and lower limb along with conventional physical therapy respectively. The outcome measures included were pressure pain threshold for lower back and lower extremity, lumbar flexion and extension range of motion (ROM), percentage disability, and patient satisfaction towards the treatment which were measured pre intervention (day 1) and post treatment (day 5). Results: The interaction between group and time was analysed using two-way mixed ANOVA. The results suggested that experimental group was statistically significant over the control group in terms of pressure pain threshold in lower back (P= <0.001) and lower limb (P= 0.003), disability (P= <0.001) and patient satisfaction (P= 0.034) and lumbar flexion (P= 0.002) except lumbar extension ROM (P= 0.973). Conclusions: Gross myofascial release when given as an adjuvant to conventional physical therapy proved to provide significant and faster improvement over only conventional treatment in subjects diagnosed with low back pain with radiculopathy.