abstract   background: osteoarthritis (oa) is the most common joint disease occuring after middle age. because of the high mobility of the neck, oa is common in the cervical spine. the purpose of this study was to determine and compare the effects of intermittent traction on patients with mild and moderate cervical oa. therefore, 32 patients with cervical oa were recruited.   methods: aclinical...

Despite the prevalence of obesity, how obesity affects human physical capabilities is not well documented. As an effort toward addressing this, the current study investigated the obesity effect on joint range of motion (RoM) based on data collected from 20 obese and 20 non-obese males. In total, 30 inter-segmental motions occurring at the shoulder, elbow, knee and ankle joints and lumbar and ce...

STUDY DESIGN This was a prospective pilot study to investigate the global motion characteristics of the spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis populations. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study is to determine the influence of a spondylolisthesis or a spondylolysis on global spinal motion and to establish whether this is dependent on the cause of the slip or the degree/grade of the slip. SUMMARY OF...

BACKGROUND Biomechanical studies have shown that dynamic stabilization restores the neutral zone and stabilizes the motion segment. Unfortunately, there are limitations to clinical measurement of lumbar motion segments when using routine radiographs. Radiostereometric analysis is a 3-dimensional technique and can measure the spinal motion segment more accurately than techniques using plain film...

CONTEXT Knee bending during tests of lumbar forward bending (FB) may introduce confounding variability. Precluding bending at the knees has, therefore, long been standard protocol to produce valid and reproducible results. However, there is limited research on cervical spine bending as a confounding variable in whole trunk and lumbar FB. OBJECTIVE To examine the role of cervical spine bending...

in this study to determine whether spine stiffness is predictive of clinical results after lumbar spinal fusion for spinal stenosis, a total of 78 patients were measured intraoperatively with kocher clamp manual distraction technique to determine motion segment stiffness then spinal fusion was performed for any loose segment. ‎statistical analysis revealed that stiffness measurement correlate w...

BACKGROUND A thorough understanding of the biomechanical characteristics of the healthy human spine is critical in furthering the treatment of spinal pathology. The goal of this study was to investigate the motion of the intact lumbar spine segment as measured by range of motion (ROM), and to investigate the dependencies thereof on gender and intervertebral level. MATERIALS AND METHODS Kinema...

STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional study. PURPOSE To verify the association of hamstring tightness and range of motion in anterior pelvic tilt (PT), lumbar motion (LM), and trunk flexion (TF) during forward bending. OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE Increased hamstring stiffness could be a possible contributing factor to low back injuries. Clinical observations have suggested that hamstring tightness influe...