Exploring the Effects of Standardized Soft Tissue Mobilization on the Viscoelastic Properties, Pressure Pain Thresholds, and Tactile Pressure Thresholds of the Cesarean Section Scar
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Objectives of soft tissue mobilization applied to cesarean section (C-section) scars are to decrease stiffness and to reduce pain. Research investigating these effects is lacking. Materials and methods: The authors conducted a descriptive, exploratory, proof-of-concept clinical study. Women aged 18 to 40 years who had undergone at least one C-section were recruited. A trained osteopath performed standardized mobilization of the C-section scar once a week for 2 weeks. Scar quality and pain characteristics, viscoelastic properties, pressure pain thresholds, and tactile pressure thresholds were measured before and after each session. Paired Student's t-tests and Friedman's test with Dunn–Bonferroni adjustment were performed to assess the immediate and short-term effects of mobilizations. Kendall's W and Cohen's d were calculated to determine effect sizes over the short term. Simple bootstrapped bias-corrected and accelerated 95% median confidence intervals were computed. Results: Thirty-two participants completed the study. The Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale questionnaire revealed differences with small and moderate effects for stiffness (p = 0.021, d = 0.43), relief (p < 0.001, d = 0.28), surface area (p = 0.040, d = 0.36), flexibility (p = 0.007, d = 0.52), and participant opinion (p = 0.001, d = 0.62). Mobilizations increased elasticity (p < 0.001, W = 0.11), decreased stiffness (p < 0.001, W = 0.30), and improved pressure pain thresholds (p < 0.001, W = 0.10) of the C-section, with small to moderate effects. The results also showed decreased tone and mechanical stress relaxation time, as well as increased tactile pressure thresholds at the different measurement times (p < 0.05), but trivial effect sizes (W < 0.10). Creep showed trivial effect and no significant difference (p = 0.09). Conclusion: This study showed that two sessions of mobilization of C-section scar might have a beneficial effect on some viscoelastic properties of the C-section as well as on pain. Some variables of interest useful for future empirical studies are highlighted. ClinicalTrial. Gov NCT04320355.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 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 | 0.000 |
| 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".