Pregnancy-Related Low Back Pain Relief after Maximum Static Flexibility Program

Abstract

Background: Pregnancy-related low back pain (LBP) impacts pregnancy. Flexibilizing facilitates movements providing posture correction and pain relief. Objective: To analyze effects of a maximum static flexibility program on pregnancy’s LBP. Methods: Clinical prospective randomized controlled trial. Setting: Brazilian Governmental Health Program’s prenatal care. Participants: 40 volunteer of pregnant women, gestational age between 20 and 31 weeks, with/without LBP randomly assigned to experimental group (EG) or control group (CG): EG n = 20 (E1 with LBP and E2 without LBP) and CG n = 20 (C1 with LBP and C2 without LBP). Interventions: EG intervention was sessions of static flexion. CG received conventional medical treatment. Pain intensity was measured by visual analog scale (VAS) of pain. Chi-square, Wilcoxon and the Kruskal-Wallis statistical tests were adopted. Results: Concerning percent variation (Δ%) E1 presented 56.4% reduction of LBP while E2, C1, C2 increased LBP by 2.9%, 0.1%, 0.5% respectively. Wilcoxon test outcome comparing pre- and post-test of experimental and control groups on pain intensity levels presented significant E1 p < 0.05. Kruskal-Wallis test comparing post-test C1 with E1 with E2 and C2 presented p < 0.05 (C1 post vs. E1 post: p = 0.006; C1 post vs. E2 post: p < 0.0001; C1 post vs. C2 post: p = 0.002), showing significant effect of the experimental treatment. Conclusion: Gains on LBP for EG show that the static flexibilizing exercises reduce and prevent pregnancy-related LBP.