Therapeutic exercise and manual therapy for persons with lumbar spinal stenosis

Abstract

Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) may produce disabling back and leg pain, and is the leading cause of surgery in adults over 65 years old. No reviews have summarized the effects of manual therapy and therapeutic exercise for these patients. The objective of this article is to examine the design and effectiveness of therapeutic exercise and manual therapy for patients with LSS, and to identify the state of evidence for these interventions on pain, disability, function and impairments in patients with LSS. In the report, three physical therapists each evaluated the methodological quality of 11 studies obtained from a systematic search of computerized databases. Patients involved in the studies were subjects aged 40–80 years with low back and leg pain, and diagnosed with LSS for 1 month or more; with exercise or manual therapy as the primary intervention; and any type of study design. Non-English articles, dissertations, unpublished data and studies using steroid injections, surgery or medications such as muscle...