A Comparative Study on the Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation versus Intermittent Lumbar Traction in Chronic Non-Specific Low Back Pain Combined with the Extensor Endurance Exercise Regime

Background: The endeavor of this study was done to compare the effectiveness of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) in subjects with chronic non-specific low back pain (LBP) as compared to intermittent lumbar traction (ILT) with simultaneous application of extensor endurance exercise with both the interventions. Methods: Quasi-experimental approach was chosen for conducting the study with pre-intervention and post-intervention evaluation of the outcomes. Convenient sampling and random allocation to groups were used to select and assign the sample that comprised of 10 subjects each in the two experimental groups and 10 subjects in control group out of total sample size of 30. Standardized tools such as VAS for evaluating the pain, modified Oswestry LBP disability questionnaire for evaluating disability were utilized. Extensor endurance exercise with warm-up and cool down were administered to both the experimental groups in common and TENS and ILT were administered to subjects of first and second experimental group respectively. Control group subjects were only treated with hot packs. Results: The data were analyzed with help of Microsoft excel. Paired t-test was done for Intragroup analysis and un-paired t-test, ANOVA for intergroup analysis. The findings suggested that there was significant difference within group-A and group-B for pain and disability and for group-C; the significant difference was found only for pain. Conclusion: From this study we concluded that, with common intervention of extensor endurance exercise for both experimental groups; significant reductions were seen in disability of subjects with chronic non-specific low back pain after four weeks of intervention with intermittent lumbar traction than that of TENS but the reduction of pain was more significant in subjects intervened with TENS than that with intermittent lumbar traction.