In turn, chronic back pain may require a progressive care approach, starting with early treatments including medication and self-managed thermal therapy. heat/cold) and gentle exercise and physical stretching. analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxants, topical pain relief, etc.) thermal therapy (e.g. Acute back pain can be treated with medications aimed at reducing pain and inflammation (e.g. overweight, obese, etc.) and genetics are the most common. Several risk factors have been associated with the development of LBP, among those, age, fitness level, weight (e.g. spinal nerve compression, sciatica, stenosis, spondylolisthesis, etc.) and non-spinal factors (e.g. intervertebral disc degeneration, spondylosis, arthritis, etc.), nerve and spinal cord problems (e.g. tendon/muscle/ligament tears and spasms, traumatic injuries, etc.), degenerative diseases (e.g. spinal bifida, scoliosis, lordosis, kyphosis, etc.), injuries (e.g. The mechanical causes of LBP can have different origin, such as: congenital (e.g. Most acute back pain cases have a mechanical component, including physical disruption of the spine, muscle, nerves and intervertebral discs (IVD) in the lumbar region of the spine. In turn, chronic back pain is experienced for 12 weeks or longer, and requires medical treatment or surgery. Back pain may be acute if only last a few days or weeks, and tends to resolve without residual loss of function. LBP affects more than 570 million people globally, equivalent to about 7.5% of the world population in 2017. Lower back pain (LBP) is defined as pain on the posterior aspect of the body from the twelfth ribs to the lower gluteal folds that last for at least one day. These results are consistent with prior observations of therapeutic benefits derived from spinal AP traction. Also, the stress relief experienced by the lumbar discs was effective in all BMI models, and it was found maximal in the normal BMI model.
We predict typical traction levels lead to significant distraction stresses in the lumbar discs, thus producing a stress relief by reducing the compression stresses normally experienced by these tissues. The stress relief produced on the lumbar discs by the posteroanterior traction system was investigated on human subject models with different BMI (normal, overweight, moderate obese and extreme obese BMI cases). In this study, we developed finite element simulations of mechanical therapy produced by a commercial thermo-mechanical massage bed capable of spinal PA traction. PA traction aims to maintain the lumbar lordosis curvature throughout the spinal traction therapy while reducing the intradiscal pressure. An alternative to axial traction has been recently tested, consisting of posteroanterior (PA) traction in supine posture, which was recently shown effective to increase the intervertebral space and lordotic angle using MRI. However, such axial traction may change the normal lordotic curvature, and result in unwanted side effects and/or inefficient reduction of the IVD pressure. Spinal traction is a physical intervention that provides constant or intermittent stretching axial force to the lumbar vertebrae to gradually distract spinal tissues into better alignment, reduce intervertebral disc (IVD) pressure, and manage lower back pain (LBP).