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Back Support Belt - A New Back Pain Solution
Postural Evaluation of a New Back Belt Design
Center for Ergonomic Research, Miami University; Marvin Dainoff, Leonard
Mark, Shawn Oates, and Dean Smith
The Extent of low back pain in the general population
There were almost 15 million office visits for "mechanical" low back pain in
1990, ranking this problem fifth as a reason for all physician visits. 1
Independent Review of Back A Line Belt
A newly designed Lower
back belt (Back A Line) is now available. The belt is not elastic, but
provides a stiff form-fitted surface in the lumbar region of the spine. It is
argued that this design will actually stimulate abdominal muscles by providing
resistance.
The potential effectiveness of the new back belt was evaluated in a controlled
laboratory test. This test is based on a well established set of procedures
developed in our laboratory involving the investigation of postural changes
during reaching.
The basic goal of these studies was the analysis and determination of postural
transitions during reaching tasks. To take the simplest example, for me to reach
an object placed relatively close to me (at a distance less than my arm length),
I can just extend my arm. If the object is placed at a distance longer than my
arm length, I will need to bend my trunk to reach it.
Thus, depending on the distance of target, two different postural
configurations are employed. One uses an arm-only reach; the second an
arm-plus-trunk reach. However, a consistent finding from this set of studies in
our laboratory is the transition point between configurations does not occur at
the maximum distance set by the subject's anthropometry (e.g., arm length) but
at an closer distance.
This transition point can be manipulated by changes in both task and starting
postures. We have argued that the particular location of the transition point
may reflect a user-generated margin of safety; protecting against overloading at
the extremes of ranges of motion.
Preliminary results indicate that when subjects wore the belt while reaching,
they tended to have transition points closer to their bodies, than while not
reaching.
Hence, the belt seems to act to preserve a greater margin of safety--keeping
the user from extreme ranges of motion. It is interesting, however, that this
effect only seems to happen when the task requires a great deal of stability
(picking up a small bead with a needle.) There was no difference in transition
point when subjects were asked to perform a simpler task (picking up a block.)
This difference in outcomes between tasks can, if verified, lead credence to the
argument that the potential protective aspect of the belt is manifest when the
task requires postural stability.
1 Spine. 1995 Jan 1;20(1):11-9. Physician office visits for low back
pain. Frequency, clinical evaluation, and treatment patterns from a U.S.
national survey. Hart LG, Deyo RA, Cherkin DC. Department of Family
Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle.
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