Differences in proprioception do exist between individuals with back pain and those free from back pain. Further research needs to be undertaken on proprioceptive exercise programs and their effect on back pain.

A high-intensity zone is a common finding in patients in whom low back and leg pain are investigated, but the presence of a high-intensity zone does not define a group of patients with particular clinical features.

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Study Design. Repeated measures experiment. Objective. To determine the effect of changes in horizontal lift distance on the amount of flexion, at lift onset, in different spine regions when using different lift styles.Summary of Background Data. By approximating spine bending during lifting as a pure rotation about a single revolute joint, the differential effects of task constraints and instructions on motions of different spine levels will be obscured.Methods. Eight participants lifted a 10-kg crate from the floor, 10 times at each of five distances. Participants were instructed to use freestyle (a participant's preferred lift style), squat, or stoop lift styles. Kinematic data were collected from the mid thoracic spine, lower thoracic/ upper lumbar spine, mid lumbar spine, and the lower lumbar spine at lift onset. A whole spine angle was also calculated.Results. Flexion of the lower lumbar spine was not affected by lift distance and style. Differences between lift styles occurred mainly in the mid thoracic and the lower thoracic/upper lumbar regions. With increasing horizontal distance, changes in lift style occurred in the upper three spine regions.Conclusions. These results suggest that the tensile strain on tissues in the lower lumbar spine, which can be a cause of injury in lifting, was not affected by lift style or horizontal lift distance when lifting from floor level.

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Inertial sensors may help clinicians to assess patients’ movement and potentially support clinical decision making. Our aim was to determine whether shoulder range of motion during movement tasks measured using inertial sensors is capable of accurately discriminating between patients with different shoulder problems. Inertial sensors were used to measure 3-dimensional shoulder motion during 6 tasks of 37 patients on the waiting list for shoulder surgery. Discriminant function analysis was used to identify whether the range of motion of different tasks could classify patients with different shoulder problems. The discriminant function analysis could correctly classify 91.9% of patients into one of the 3 diagnostic groups based. The tasks that associated a patient with a particular diagnostic group were the following: subacromial decompression: abduction, rotator cuff repair of tears ≤5 cm: flexion and rotator cuff repair of tears >5 cm: combing hair, abduction, and horizontal abduction–adduction. The discriminant function analysis showed that range of motion measured by inertial sensors can correctly classify patients and could be used as a screening tool to support surgery planning.

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