Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Nov 18, 2021; 12(11): 816-832
Published online Nov 18, 2021. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v12.i11.816
Paraspinal strength and electromyographic fatigue in patients with sub-acute back pain and controls: Reliability, clinical applicability and between-group differences
George A Koumantakis, Jacqueline A Oldham
George A Koumantakis, Laboratory of Advanced Physiotherapy (LAdPhys), Physiotherapy Department, University of West Attica (UNIWA), Athens 12243, Attiki, Greece
Jacqueline A Oldham, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester M1 7DN, Lancs, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Koumantakis GA and Oldham JA, contributed equally to the work; Koumantakis GA conceptualized and designed the study together with Oldham JA; Koumantakis GA and Oldham JA carried out the analysis; Oldham JA provided supervision; Koumantakis GA and Oldham JA drafted the initial manuscript; all authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript as submitted.
Supported by Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), Athens, Greece, No. T104830098; and Hospital Saving Association (HSA), London, United Kingdom, No. 99/2.
Institutional review board statement: The Central Manchester NHS Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom and The University of Manchester Ethical Committees granted ethical approval for all experiments.
Informed consent statement: All involved persons (subjects) gave their written informed consent prior to study inclusion.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Koumantakis GA reports grants from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), Greece, and a supplementary grant from the Hospital Saving Association (HSA), United Kingdom, during the conduct of the study and no other conflict of interests. Jacqueline A Oldham declares no conflict of interests.
Data sharing statement: Dataset available from the corresponding author at gkoumantakis@uniwa.gr.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: George A Koumantakis, MSc, PhD, Assistant Professor, Laboratory of Advanced Physiotherapy (LAdPhys), Physiotherapy Department, University of West Attica (UNIWA), Ag. Spyridonos 28, Aigaleo, Athens 12243, Attiki, Greece. gkoumantakis@uniwa.gr
Received: May 9, 2021
Peer-review started: May 9, 2021
First decision: June 16, 2021
Revised: June 27, 2021
Accepted: September 30, 2021
Article in press: September 30, 2021
Published online: November 18, 2021
Core Tip

Core Tip: Patients with low back pain (LBP) frequently exhibit muscle strength and fatigue impairments. Sixty-six patients with sub-acute recurrent LBP, able to perform a short duration isometric maximal strength evaluation, followed by a brief submaximal endurance performance test of the paraspinals, demonstrated strength deficits, as well as electromyographic (EMG)-fatigue differences in relation to a group of healthy participants. Test-retest reliability examining the level of accuracy of strength and EMG-fatigue measures, and the discriminative validity of frequency data were also reported. There were no adverse effects of the methodology followed. Paraspinal muscle re-training to improve the identified deficits should be emphasised.