The Effect of Secondary Prevention in Patients With Recurrent Low Back Pain

The PNE intervention consisted of 2 sessions of 30 minutes. In the first session, the main goal is to explain the patient why pain is important and why people can't live without it. Besides it is explained why objective findings such as x-rays, MRI, CT scans, etc. often lack significant findings despite the pain that the patient experiences. This first session of pain education might help the patient understand that pain is necessarily a result from tissue damage. Furthermore, the session explains the right approach to conquer pain and to avoid going down in this vicious circle of low back pain. The second session of PNE, is a revision of the first session, continuing on what was unclear from the first session.

The exercise therapy varies form analytical exercises in the first sessions, to functional and sports related exercises near the following sessions. The first session focuses on the lumbar neuromuscular control of the patients: first a voluntary contraction of the Transversus Abdominis muscle, the Multifidus muscle and the pelvic floor muscles is learned. When the subject is able to maintain the combined contraction for 10 times, the exercises evolve to more complicated tasks. In the final stage, more functional and sport specific tasks will be exercised.