FRIDAY, Feb. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Among women with back pain, the subjective assessment of difficulty when taking the active straight leg raising (ASLR) test generally correlates well with the objectively measured force of the leg raises, according to a study in the Feb. 1 issue of Spine.
Jan M.A. Mens, M.D., of the Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and colleagues administered the ASLR test to 21 women with post-pregnancy back pain. Each woman took the test with and without the support of a pelvic belt and, in each case, subjectively rated the difficulty of the test on a six-point scale from "not difficult" to "unable to do." The researchers objectively measured the forces of leg raising at 0 and 20 cm elevation using a digital force gauge, and then compared the subjective and objective ratings.
Without the pelvic belt, the researchers found that there was moderate to substantial correlation between the women's subjective ASLR score and the objective measures of force at 0 and 20 cm leg elevation. However, when women wore the pelvic belt, the mean subjective ASLR difficulty score decreased, while the objectively measured force increased a small amount at 0 cm elevation and exhibited a negligible change at 20 cm elevation.
"The subjective scores for the ASLR test correlate well with the objective measured force; however, the subjective effect of wearing a pelvic belt does not correlate with the measured force," the authors write.
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