The effect of posteroanterior mobilisation on sagittal mobility of the lumbar spine

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a posteroanterior central vertebral pressure (PA mobilisation) on sagittal mobility of the lumbar spine in asymptomatic subjects. On 3 separate days an experienced manipulative physiotherapist stood on a force platform and applied a PA mobilisation to L3 spinous process for 2 minutes on 18 female subjects. Prior to this, subjects acted as their own control by lying prone for the same length of time but without receiving mobilisation treatment. The force platform was used to indirectly measure the minimum and maximum peak forces, and the frequency of oscillation of the applied PA mobilisation. A CA-6000 Spine Motion Analyser (SMA) was used to measure lumbar spine flexion and extension before and after the mobilisation and control treatments. Prior to the main experiment, intra-therapist reliability of the SMA was found to be good, with no significant difference (p > 0.05) in flexion or extension range of movement between 3 days of testing and root mean square error (RMSE) values of 7.43 degrees for flexion and 8.6 degrees for extension. The results indicated that a PA mobilisation with a mean maximum force of 92.5 N, amplitude of force oscillation of 9.6 N and a frequency of oscillation of 4.5 Hz had no significant affect (p > 0.05) on sagittal mobility of the lumbar spine in the asymptomatic subject population.