No abstract

These definitions provide standards that may improve future comparisons of low back pain prevalence figures by person, place and time characteristics, and offer opportunities for statistical summaries.

Objective To evaluate if a specific exercise strategy, targeting the rotator cuff and scapula stabilisers, improves shoulder function and pain more than unspecific exercises in patients with subacromial impingement syndrome, thereby decreasing the need for arthroscopic subacromial decompression.Design Randomised, participant and single assessor blinded, controlled study.

Measurements of neck strength taken in upright position with the DBC 140 equipment have almost perfect intra- and inter-tester reliability and justify the use of this test procedure. The use of the first measurement in a test series can be recommended for use in clinical practice since it was shown to be the maximal test value and thus, had a very low intra-tester difference. The use of reference values for neck strength when evaluating patients with neck disorders needs to take gender into account.

Presurgery physiotherapy decreases pain, risk of avoidance behavior, and worsening of psychological well-being, and improves quality of life and physical activity levels before surgery compared with waiting-list controls. These results were maintained only for activity levelspost surgery. Still, presurgery selection, content, dosage of exercises, and importance of being active in a presurgery physiotherapy intervention is of interest to study further to improve long-term outcome.