Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Toward a Clinical Test of Lumbar Spine Kinesthesia

1996; American Physical Therapy Association; Volume: 24; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2519/jospt.1996.24.6.354

1938-1344

Lorrie Maffey-Ward, Gwendolen Jull, Louise Wellington,

Orthopedic Surgery and Rehabilitation

Poor lumbar spine kinesthetic awareness is often observed in low back pain patients and is usually evaluated qualitatively in the clinical situation. The purpose of this study was to investigate a simple, kinesthetic test for the lumbar spine. The experimental protocol utilized a 3Space Fastrak™ to determine the error, within and between days, of 10 healthy subjects in reproducing a neutral lumbopelvic (T10-S2) position following movement into flexion. The mean value of the repositioning error for the sagittal plane movement (flexion/extension) over the three repetitions within day 1 was 2.6 ± 1.2° and for day 2 was 2.6 ± 1.7°. No statistically significant difference existed between days. These repositioning errors were well within the ranges described by other authors for various asymptomatic joint complexes. These results provide a basis for further evaluation of this test on patients with low back pain to investigate its ability to detect any kinesthetic deficit.