Low-back pain in pregnancy. Abdominal muscles, sit-up performance, and back pain.
An attempt was made to determine the effect of pregnancy on the abdominal muscles and to correlate changes in abdominal muscles strength with low-back pain during pregnancy. The study included 328 women. Group A consisted of 164 pregnant women; group B consisted of 164 non-pregnant women. The race, age, height, weight, parity, profession, time devoted to physical fitness per week, abdominal length, and relation between the abdominal length to height were recorded. A detailed history relating to backache prior to and during pregnancy was obtained. Each woman was asked to perform a single sit-up. The results of the study indicate that about 10% of pregnant women develop severe low-back pain that interferes with daily life activities. About 49% of the non-pregnant women complained of LBP. The pain did not interfere with activities of daily living. During pregnancy, due to overstretching of the abdominal muscles, the ability to perform a sit-up is significantly decreased. Whereas all non-pregnant women could perform a sit-up, 16.6% of pregnant women could not perform a single sit-up. There was no statistically significant correlation between the sit-up performance and backache. It may be concluded that during pregnancy the abdominal muscles become insufficient.
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Department of Physical Medicine and Rahabilitation, St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center of New York, New York.
Weiss
L
L
Ducommun
E J
EJ
Medina
E
E
Butler
J G
JG
D000005:Abdomen / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D000009:Abdominal Muscles / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001416:Back Pain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001827:Body Height; D001835:Body Weight; D015444:Exercise; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010146:Pain; D010809:Physical Fitness; D011247:Pregnancy; D011248:Pregnancy Complications; D044469:Racial Groups