A non-randomized clinical trial to assess the impact of nonrigid, inelastic corsets on spine function in low back pain participants and asymptomatic controls
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND CONTEXT: Although previous studies suggest braces/corsets can reduce acute pain, no prior study has assessed back function after bracing with both self-reported and objective measures. Use of both self-reported and objective measures of spine function together may be important given evidence they assess unique aspects of function. PURPOSE: The aim was to assess both self-reported and objective measures of spinal function before, and after, use of a nonrigid, inelastic lumbar brace. STUDY DESIGN/SETTING: This was a non-randomized clinical trial. PATIENT SAMPLE: The sample included acute low back pain (LBP) participants and asymptomatic controls. OUTCOME MEASURES: Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), spinal stiffness, and muscle endurance were the outcome measures. METHODS: Three groups were studied: -LBP/-Brace (n=19), -LBP/+Brace (n=18), and +LBP/+Brace (n=17). Both groups of braced participants were instructed to wear the brace continually for 2 weeks with the exception of bedroom and bathroom activities. Before and after the 2-week period, three measures of spinal function were performed: spinal stiffness via motorized indentation of the L3 spinous process, a modified Sorensen test (timed lumbar extension against gravity), and the ODI. Repeated measures analyses of variance were conducted for all three outcomes. RESULTS: Among the groups, ODI scores decreased significantly for the +LBP/+Brace group (p<.001) compared with the other two groups. The +LBP/+Brace mean ODI score decreased 3.71 points (95% confidence interval [CI] 2.01-5.40) compared with the -LBP/-Brace group and decreased 3.48 points (95% CI 1.77-5.20) compared with the -LBP/+Brace group. Change scores for the Sorensen test were significantly increased in the +LBP/+Brace group (p=.037) compared with the -LBP/-Brace group (22.47s 95% CI 8.14-36.80). Spinal stiffness did not change significantly between groups. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that lumbar function assessed by self-reported and objective measures does not worsen when nonrigid, inelastic bracing is used for short periods of time for those with, or without, back pain. These data add to the existing literature that suggests short-term use of nonrigid, inelastic bracing for acute LBP does not decrease spinal function when measured separately with subjective or objective tools.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.022 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".