• Physical Therapy Korea
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.27-36
• /
• 2018

Background: We developed a novel integrative lumbar stabilization technique that combines lumbar extension (LE) exercise with abdominal drawing-in maneuver (ADIM) to ameliorate low back pain (LBP) associated with neuromuscular imbalance and instability, based on the collective evidence of contemporary spinal rehabilitation. Objects: The specific aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of LE exercise with and without ADIM on core muscle strength, lumbar spinal instability, and pain, as well as functional characteristics in individuals with LBP using advanced radiographic imaging techniques. Methods: patients with mechanical LBP (N = 40, 6 males; $35.1{\pm}7.6years$) were recruited and randomly assigned either to the combined LE and ADIM (experimental group) or the LE alone (control group). Outcome measures included the visual analog scale, the modified Oswestry Disability Index, muscle strength imbalance (MSI), and radiographic imaging. The lumbar intervertebral displacement (LID), intervertebral (IV) and total lumbar extension (TLE) angles were calculated to evaluate the lumbar segmental instability. Results: The experimental group showed significant differences in the L3-L4, L5-S1 LIDs, L4-L5 and L5-S1 IV angles, and TLE angle as compared to the controls (p<.05). Immediate pain reduction and muscle strength imbalance ratio were significantly different between the groups (p<.05). Conclusion: These results suggest that the addition of ADIM significantly increased lumbar spinal stabilization in individuals with LBP, thereby reducing pain associated with functional lumbar flexion during daily activities.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
• /
• v.33 no.2
• /
• pp.153-165
• /
• 2020

Background: Well-validated risk prediction models help to identify individuals at high risk of diseases and suggest preventive measures. A recent systematic review reported lack of validated prediction models for low back pain (LBP). We aimed to develop prediction models to estimate the 8-year risk of developing LBP and its recurrence. Methods: A population based prospective cohort study using data from 435,968 participants in the National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort enrolled from 2002 to 2010. We used Cox proportional hazards models. Results: During median follow-up period of 8.4 years, there were 143,396 (32.9%) first onset LBP cases. The prediction model of first onset consisted of age, sex, income grade, alcohol consumption, physical exercise, body mass index (BMI), total cholesterol, blood pressure, and medical history of diseases. The model of 5-year recurrence risk was comprised of age, sex, income grade, BMI, length of prescription, and medical history of diseases. The Harrell's C-statistic was 0.812 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.804-0.820) and 0.916 (95% CI, 0.907-0.924) in validation cohorts of LBP onset and recurrence models, respectively. Age, disc degeneration, and sex conferred the highest risk points for onset, whereas age, spondylolisthesis, and disc degeneration conferred the highest risk for recurrence. Conclusions: LBP risk prediction models and simplified risk scores have been developed and validated using data from general medical practice. This study also offers an opportunity for external validation and updating of the models by incorporating other risk predictors in other settings, especially in this era of precision medicine.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.39-46
• /
• 2019

Background: As of now, the impact of low back pain (LBP) and its chronic state, chronic low back pain (CLBP), on mental health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has never been investigated among police officers. The present investigation aims at studying this relationship using a biopsychosocial model. Methods: Between May and October 2014, a Web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among Quebec police officers (Quebec, Canada). Mental HRQOL was measured using the role emotional (RE) and the mental health (MH) domains of the SF-12v2 Health Survey. The impact of CLBP on mental HRQOL (as opposed to acute/subacute LBP or no LBP) was studied with a multivariate linear regression model. Results: Of the 3,589 police officers who participated in the study, 1,013 (28.4%) reported CLBP. The mean age of respondents was $38.5{\pm}8.7years$, and 32.0% were females. The RE (44.1/100) and MH (49.0/100) mean scores of the CLBP group were comparable with the scores found in populations suffering from cancer or heart diseases. Compared to officers without LBP, the presence of CLBP was significantly associated with lower RE (${\beta}$: -0.068; p = 0.003) and MH (${\beta}$: -0.062; p = 0.002) scores. These relationships were not found in the acute/subacute LBP group. Conclusion: Our results underscore how frequent CLBP is among police officers and how burdensome it is. Considering the importance of good physical and mental health for this occupational population, police organizations should be aware of this issue and contribute to the efforts toward CLBP prevention and management in the workplace.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
• /
• v.35 no.1
• /
• pp.86-96
• /
• 2022

Background: To explore the association between low back pain (LBP) and pelvic pain (PP) and rectus abdominis diastasis (RAD) in postpartum women and identify the characteristics and risk factors. Methods: Women diagnosed with RAD and a history of labor and delivery, between 2009 and 2018, were identified from six hospitals within the Partners Healthcare System. Univariate and multivariable binary logistic regression analyses were used to identify the risk factors associated with pain. Results: Age at onset of RAD in the non-cesarean delivery group was earlier than those in cesarean delivery (CD) group (P = 0.017). Women who underwent CD demonstrated 4.5 times greater risk of RAD than those who had no CD exposure. The cumulative composition ratio of LBP at every age stage of the period from 8 years pre-first delivery to 8 years post-first delivery was significantly higher than the other five conditions (RAD, umbilical hernia, PP, depressive disorder [DD], and strain of muscle, fascia, and tendon [SMFT]) (P for trend < 0.001). Women with DD, SMFT, and PP were more likely to have LBP (odds ratio [OR] = 1.91, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.06 to 3.47, P = 0.032; OR = 4.50, 95% CI 1.64 to 12.36, P = 0.003; OR = 2.14, 95% CI 1.17 to 3.89, P = 0.013; respectively). Conclusions: In postpartum women with RAD, DD, SMFT, and PP were found to be risk factors contributing to the development of LBP. Race and LBP also played roles in the development of PP.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.653-666
• /
• 1995

This study was conducted to investigate factors related to experience rate of low back pain(LBP) in the high school students, a questionnaire survey was carried out for 778 high school students in Andong city Kyungsang Pook province from 28th June to 10th July, 1993. The results were as follows: The experience rate of LBP for 778 high school students who were interviewed was 27.1 %. Unknown(47.4 %) was the highest in the cause of LBP. The experience rate of a academical high school students (57.8 %) was higher than the technical high school students(42.7 %) in association according to LBP and school division(P = 0. 001). The experience rate of 18 years old above students (60.2 %) was higher than 17 years old below school students(39.8 %%) in association between LBP and age(P = 0.031). The experience rate of students who go to bed at the hot floored bed (80.1 %) was higher than students who go to bed at the bed room (11.8 %) in association between LBP and room type(P = 0.012). The statisticaly significant variables related to LBP were school division, age and stress. It was revealed by this survey that independent variables related to LBP experience rate of high school students were important health problem. So the prospective research is need by those variables.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.19 no.5
• /
• pp.346-356
• /
• 2018

Overweight and abdominal obesity caused by sedentary lifestyle may induce deconditioned and atrophied extensor musculature of the lumbar spine and be a potential risk factor for low back pain (LBP). Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the validity of high intensity circuit training (HICT) on weight loss and subsequent alleviation of spine curvature (SC) and visual analog scale (VAS) among middle aged men with abdominal obesity. The training program (1 exercise session for 30 minutes, three times a week for 12 weeks) consisted of 12 different functional exercises based on core strengthening multiple joint circuit training. Portions of the obesity index related to body composition were positively changed, which improved the angles of thoracic kyposis and lumbar lordosis, which appeared to effectively reduce lower back pain. Taken together, HICT specifically designed for LBP effectively decreased obesity related body composition and was superior to other treatments for decreasing aggravation of the spine curvature and LBP caused by abdominal obesity; however, weight loss should be the primary treatment target for LBP patients.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.321-327
• /
• 2016

Purpose: The purpose was to link items of questionnaires that measure functioning and disability of persons with Low Back Pain (LBP) into the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Methods: The Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), Roland and Morris Disability Questionnaire (RM), Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ), and Short Form-36 health survey (SF-36) were evaluated to map items of those questionnaires into the ICF categories. The linking rule was employed and linking was performed independently by 10 health professionals. One-hundred and two patients with LBP were recruited from 19 medical institutes to this study for a field test to examine relations between the scale and its linked ICF category set. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to analyze their relationships. Results: Walking was only found to be one-to-one linking between the scale and the ICF. Sixty questions in FABQ were to be linked to 9 of ICF categories. Ten and 14 ICF categories were able to be linked to RM and ODI respectively. It was found that majority of items from ODI and RM scale had similar concept and linked to the same ICF category. SF-36 had only 15 categories of the ICF linked. Strong relationship was observed between measurement scales and linked ICF code sets (r=0.79, r=0.65, r=0.47, and r=-0.31 for ODI, RM, FABQ and SF-36 respectively). Conclusion: It was found that commonly used clinical tools for LBP may be linked to ICF. The study results may suggest that clinical data can be standardized to communicate between related professionals.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.13 no.11
• /
• pp.1630-1642
• /
• 2010

Recently, there is an increasing need for developing the technique of Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR), for vision based interface. Since hand gesture is defined as consecutive change of hand posture, developing the algorithm of Hand Posture Recognition (HPR) is required. Among the factors that decrease the performance of HPR, we focus on rotation factor. To achieve rotation invariant HPR, we propose a method that uses the property of video that adjacent frames in video have high correlation, considering the environment of HGR. The proposed method introduces template update of object tracking using the above mentioned property, which is different from previous works based on still images. To compare our proposed method with previous methods such as template matching, PCA and LBP, we performed experiments with video that has hand rotation. The accuracy rate of the proposed method is 22.7%, 14.5%, 10.7% and 4.3% higher than ordinary template matching, template matching using KL-Transform, PCA and LBP, respectively.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.37 no.5A
• /
• pp.375-387
• /
• 2012

This paper proposes a new real-time object tracking algorithm using particle filters with color and texture features in moving CCD camera images. If the user selects an initial object, this region is declared as a target particle and an initial state is modeled. Then, N particles are generated based on random distribution and CS-LBP (Centre Symmetric Local Binary Patterns) for texture model and weighted color distribution is modeled from each particle. For observation likelihoods estimation, Bhattacharyya distance between particles and their feature models are calculated and this observation likelihoods are used for weights of individual particles. After weights estimation, a new particle which has the maximum weight is selected and new particles are re-sampled using the maximum particle. For performance comparison, we tested a few combinations of features and particle filters. The proposed algorithm showed best object tracking performance when we used color and texture model simultaneously for likelihood estimation.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.10 no.5
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2019

In this paper, we propose an improved facial skin color extraction method to solve the problem that facial surface is lost due to shadow or illumination in skin color extraction process and skin color extraction is not possible. In the conventional HSV method, when facial surface is brightly illuminated by light, the skin color component is lost in the skin color extraction process, so that a loss area appears on the face surface. In order to solve these problems, we extract the skin color, determine the elements in the H channel value range of the skin color in the HSV color space among the lost skin elements, and combine the coordinates of the lost part with the coordinates of the original image, To minimize the number of In the face detection process, the face was detected using the LBP Cascade Classifier, which represents texture feature information in the extracted skin color image. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the detection rate and accuracy by 5.8% and 9.6%, respectively, compared with conventional RGB and HSV skin color extraction and face detection using the LBP cascade classifier method.