Abstract
Low back pain is the most prevalent musculoskeletal condition. This disorder constitutes one of the most common causes of disability worldwide, and as a result, it has a severe socioeconomic impact. Endurance tests are normally considered in low back pain rehabilitation practice to assess the muscle status. However, traditional procedures to evaluate these tests suffer from practical limitations, which potentially lead to inaccurate diagnoses. The use of digital technologies is considered here to facilitate the task of the expert and to increase the reliability and interpretability of the endurance tests. This work presents mDurance, a novel mobile health system aimed at supporting specialists in the functional assessment of trunk endurance by using wearable and mobile devices. The system employs a wearable inertial sensor to track the patient trunk posture, while portable electromyography sensors are used to seamlessly measure the electrical activity produced by the trunk muscles. The information registered by the sensors is processed and managed by a mobile application that facilitates the expert's normal routine, while reducing the impact of human errors and expediting the analysis of the test results. In order to show the potential of the mDurance system, a case study has been conducted. The results of this study prove the reliability of mDurance and further demonstrate that practitioners are certainly interested in the regular use of a system of this nature.
Highlights
Conservative treatments for low back pain (LBP) are gaining popularity due to the scientific evidence of their effectiveness
These applications are mainly oriented to provide trunk exercise recommendations. They fundamentally consist of a database of image or video exercises, which are intended to guide the patient or person suffering from LBP on how to execute them. This category of apps is available for any sort of users, and normally, they do not take into account the potential diseases that may lead to LBP
A spectacular proliferation of medical applications and systems has been observed during recent years; more significant contributions are still necessary to simplify, expedite and improve traditional health practices
Summary
Conservative treatments for low back pain (LBP) are gaining popularity due to the scientific evidence of their effectiveness. To determine the resistance of the trunk muscles, experts traditionally measure and annotate the observed time that the patient can hold a given posture during a test This form of evaluation is subject to potential errors, mainly posed by the subjectivity associated with the estimation of the test finalization and the effective measurement of the time elapsed during its execution [12]. All of the information registered through these sensors is intelligently managed by a mobile application that builds on an mHealth framework developed in a previous work [31] This app is devoted to facilitating the expert’s normal routine, helping mitigate human errors and accelerating the analysis of the tests.
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