Abstract
BACKGROUND: Lower Back Pain (LBP) with radiculopathy is a potentially more serious form of mechanical low back pain. A paucity of literature exists about the effect of the gross myofascial release (MFR) technique on the management of LBP. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to evaluate the effect of gross MFR when given as an adjunct to conventional physical therapy in subjects with low back pain with radiculopathy. METHODS: Forty subjects (n = 40) clinically diagnosed with LBP with radiculopathy were enrolled and randomly allocated to either the control group (n = 20) or the experimental group (n = 20). Both study groups received 5 sessions of intervention. The control group received conventional physical therapy while the experimental group received gross MFR of the trunk and lower limb along with conventional physical therapy. The outcome measures included were pressure pain threshold for the lower back and lower extremity, lumbar flexion and extension range of motion (ROM), percentage disability, and patient satisfaction towards the treatment which were measured pre-intervention (day 1) and post-treatment (day 5). The interaction between group and time was analysed using two-way mixed ANOVA. RESULTS: The results suggested that the experimental group was statistically significant over the control group in terms of pressure pain threshold in the lower back (p < 0.001) and lower limb (p = 0.003), disability (p < 0.001), and patient satisfaction (p = 0.034) and lumbar flexion (p = 0.002) except lumbar extension ROM (p = 0.973). CONCLUSION: When given as an adjuvant to conventional physical therapy, gross myofascial release proved to provide a significant and faster short-term improvement over conventional treatment alone in subjects diagnosed with low back pain with radiculopathy.