Back Pain or Low back Pain

Back Pain or Low back Pain

Low back pain is an extremely common problem that may be due to a number of causes like lumber strain, Degenerative Disc, Spinal stenosis, Traumatic fracture, Congenital disease, Spondylolysis, Neoplasia, Infection, Inflamatory arthritis, diseases of pelvic organs, renal disease, gastrointestinal disease etc.

Physical therapy, manual therapy, and back exercises may serve as useful treatment of many of these conditions. It helps to restore strength, improve posture, and alleviate pain and disability. This is called Rehabilitation.

Treatment Modalities

Therapy modalities include heat, cold, ultrasound, and diathermy. The purpose of these treatments is

to allow the patient to perform an exercise. Acute injury is best managed with the RICE program: rest; ice; compression; and elevation. Ice packs include frozen gel packs and frozen bags of peas. Ice should be applied for up to 20 minutes, and repeated every few hours.

Heat increase local blood flow, and can be used after the first few days following injury. A heating pad over a layer of plastic separating it from warm moist towels can be applied as moist heat for 20 minutes preceding exercise. Diathermy like Ultrasound has little advantage over hot packs, or moist heat.

Exercise are:

1.MANUAL THERAPY- Massage techniques can be taught in the office to the patient and his or her significant other. Similar to physical therapy, an exercise program should follow manual therapy.

2. EXERCISE THERAPY –A graded exercise program should be individualized depending upon pain severity, limitation of movement, and current strength. A home exercise program should have clearly defined goals, easily understood instructions, and should not require more than about 30 minutes duration for each session. In most cases we ask the patient to perform a twice daily regimen. Relaxation exercise(Yoga, breathing, audio tapes, and guided imagery) cab be done.

There are two types of back exercises that can be used:

  •  Flexion exercises strengthen the abdominal muscles and also reduce the lumbar lordosis

  •  Extension exercises strengthen the paraspinal muscles.