Telerehabilitation allows accurate assessment of patients with low back pain

Skype assessments agree well with in-person exams, reports study in Spine

2013-05-21

(Press-News.org) Philadelphia, Pa. (May 20, 2013) - A new "telerehabilitation" approach lets physical therapists assess patients with low back pain (LBP) over the Internet, with good accuracy compared with face-to-face examinations, reports a study in the May 15 issue of Spine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

Taking advantage of Skype and other widely-used services may make telerehabilitation a more feasible alternative to in-person clinic visits, according to the new research by Prof. Manuel Arroyo-Morales and colleagues of University of Granada, Spain. They believe their results "give preliminary support to the implementation of web-based LBP assessment systems using video recordings that can be evaluated by different therapists."

Can Back Pain Assessments Be Performed Over the Internet? The researchers designed and evaluated a web-based telerehabilitation system for performing routine clinical assessments of patients with LBP. The telerehabilitation setup operated across a low-bandwidth Internet connection between two personal computers equipped with webcams.

The system included the popular Skype videoconferencing service, allowing the patient and physical therapist could see and talk to each other in real time. The therapist guided the patient in performing specific movements, and captured video clips for analysis using video motion analysis software (Kinovea). The therapist and patient were also able to complete standard back pain questionnaires using the web-based system.

Fifteen patients with chronic LBP underwent two assessments in random order: once face-to-face and once using the telerehabilitation setup. Accuracy was assessed by comparing the results of telerehabilitation assessment with those of in-person assessment.

The results showed good agreement between the two evaluations, supporting the use of telerehabilitation for clinical assessment of LBP. There was good correlation for measures made on video motion analysis, such as spine mobility and back muscle endurance; as well as questionnaire-based assessments such as disability, pain, and health-related quality of life.

Skype and Other Tools Make Telerehabilitation More Feasible The telerehabilitation setup showed consistent results for the same therapist at different times (intra-rater reliability) as well as for assessment by independent therapists (inter-rater reliability).

There is growing interest in Internet-based systems for assessment of patients with musculoskeletal disorders. Telerehabilitation approaches could be especially valuable for patient in rural or remote areas, who don't have easy access to healthcare providers.

In the past, the use of telerehabilitation was limited by high equipment costs. The new study shows the successful use of telerehabilitation using widely available and familiar technology, including the use of free software such as Skype.

The telerehabilitation system evaluated in the new study may be useful in assessing patients with the very common problem of LBP, showing good agreement with the results of face-to-face assessment. However, there are still some factors limiting more widespread use—including the need for "potentially unwieldy" security software to protect patient privacy.

Prof. Arroyo-Morales and coauthors also note that many patients who would otherwise have been eligible for the study weren't included because of a lack of familiarity and experience with computers. The researchers call for further studies in larger groups of patients—focusing on those who don't have easy access to in-person evaluations.

### About Spine Recognized internationally as the leading journal in its field, Spine is an international, peer-reviewed, bi-weekly periodical that considers for publication original articles in the field of spine. It is the leading subspecialty journal for the treatment of spinal disorders. Only original papers are considered for publication with the understanding that they are contributed solely to Spine. According to the latest ISI Science Citation Impact Factor, Spine is the most frequently cited spinal deformity journal among general orthopaedic journals and subspecialty titles.

About Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is a leading international publisher of trusted content delivered in innovative ways to practitioners, professionals and students to learn new skills, stay current on their practice, and make important decisions to improve patient care and clinical outcomes.

LWW is part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information, business intelligence and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry. Wolters Kluwer Health is part of Wolters Kluwer, a market-leading global information services company with 2012 annual revenues of €3.6 billion ($4.6 billion).

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

72 percent of pregnant women experience constipation and other bowel problems

2013-05-21

MAYWOOD, Il. - Nearly three out of four pregnant women experience constipation, diarrhea or other bowel disorders during their pregnancies, a Loyola University Medical Center study has found. But such bowel disorders have only minimal impacts on pregnant women's quality of life, the study found. The study by senior author Scott Graziano, MD and Payton Johnson was presented during the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists 61st Annual Clinical Meeting in New Orleans. One hundred and four pregnant women were enrolled and completed the first trimester ...

Not just blowing in the wind: Compressing air for renewable energy storage

2013-05-21

RICHLAND, Wash. – Enough Northwest wind energy to power about 85,000 homes each month could be stored in porous rocks deep underground for later use, according to a new, comprehensive study. Researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Bonneville Power Administration identified two unique methods for this energy storage approach and two eastern Washington locations to put them into practice. Compressed air energy storage plants could help save the region's abundant wind power – which is often produced at night when winds are strong ...

Penn engineers' nanoantennas improve infrared sensing

2013-05-21

A team of University of Pennsylvania engineers has used a pattern of nanoantennas to develop a new way of turning infrared light into mechanical action, opening the door to more sensitive infrared cameras and more compact chemical-analysis techniques. The research was conducted by assistant professor Ertugrul Cubukcu and postdoctoral researcher Fei Yi, along with graduate students Hai Zhu and Jason C. Reed, all of the Department of Material Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. It was published in the journal Nano Letters. Detecting ...

Coming into existence

2013-05-21

HERALDING Entanglement, by general consensus of physicists, is the weirdest part of quantum science. To say that two particles, A and B, are entangled means that they are actually two parts of an inseparable quantum thing. An important consequence of this inherent kinship is that measuring a property of A (say, the particle's polarization) is necessarily to know the corresponding property of B, even if you're not there with a detector to observe B and even if (as explained below) the existence of that property had no prior fixed value until the moment particle ...

Timing of cancer radiation therapy may minimize hair loss, researchers say

2013-05-21

LA JOLLA, CA---Discovering that mouse hair has a circadian clock - a 24-hour cycle of growth followed by restorative repair - researchers suspect that hair loss in humans from toxic cancer radiotherapy and chemotherapy might be minimized if these treatments are given late in the day. The study, which appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that mice lost 85 percent of their hair if they received radiation therapy in the morning, compared to a 17 percent loss when treatment occurred in the evening. The ...

Opening doors to foldable electronics with inkjet-printed graphene

2013-05-21

Imagine a bendable tablet computer or an electronic newspaper that could fold to fit in a pocket. The technology for these devices may not be so far off. Northwestern University researchers have recently developed a graphene-based ink that is highly conductive and tolerant to bending, and they have used it to inkjet-print graphene patterns that could be used for extremely detailed, conductive electrodes. The resulting patterns are 250 times more conductive than previous attempts to print graphene-based electronic patterns and could be a step toward low-cost, foldable ...

Researchers perform fastest measurements ever made of ion channel proteins

2013-05-21

New York, NY—May 20, 2013—The miniaturization of electronics continues to create unprecedented capabilities in computer and communications applications, enabling handheld wireless devices with tremendous computing performance operating on battery power. This same miniaturization of electronic systems is also creating new opportunities in biotechnology and biophysics. A team of researchers at Columbia Engineering has used miniaturized electronics to measure the activity of individual ion-channel proteins with temporal resolution as fine as one microsecond, producing the ...

Amazon River exhales virtually all carbon taken up by rain forest

2013-05-21

The Amazon rain forest, popularly known as the lungs of the planet, inhales carbon dioxide as it exudes oxygen. Plants use carbon dioxide from the air to grow parts that eventually fall to the ground to decompose or get washed away by the region's plentiful rainfall. Until recently people believed much of the rain forest's carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean. University of Washington research showed a decade ago that rivers exhale huge amounts of carbon dioxide – though left open the question of how that was possible, since bark and stems ...

The compound in the Mediterranean diet that makes cancer cells 'mortal'

2013-05-21

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that a compound abundant in the Mediterranean diet takes away cancer cells' "superpower" to escape death. By altering a very specific step in gene regulation, this compound essentially re-educates cancer cells into normal cells that die as scheduled. One way that cancer cells thrive is by inhibiting a process that would cause them to die on a regular cycle that is subject to strict programming. This study in cells, led by Ohio State University researchers, found that a compound in certain plant-based foods, called apigenin, could ...

Study shows how bilinguals switch between languages

2013-05-21

Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona. The research, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages. "A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Project to redesign clinical trials for neurologic conditions for underserved populations funded with $2.9M grant to UTHealth Houston

Menarini Group and Insilico Medicine enter a second exclusive global license agreement for an AI discovered preclinical asset targeting high unmet needs in oncology