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Published on: December 13, 2024
Sensitivity, specificity and predictive value of the clinical trunk muscle endurance tests in low back pain
Amir Massoud Arab1, Mahyar Salavati, Ismaeil Ebrahimi
1Department of Physical Therapy, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Evin. arabloo_masoud@hotmail.com
Objective:
To describe the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy of five clinical tests used to measure trunk muscle endurance in low back pain.
Design:
A cross-sectional non-experimental design.
Setting:
Orthopaedic and physical therapy departments of four hospitals and outpatient physical therapy clinics, Tehran, Iran.
Subjects:
Convenience sample of 200 subjects participated in this study. Subjects were categorized into four groups: men without low back pain (N = 50, mean (SD) age = 38 (12) years), women without low back pain (N = 50, mean (SD) age = 43 (11) years), men with low back pain (N = 50, mean (SD) age = 39 (12) years) and women with low back pain (N = 50, mean (SD) age = 43 (12) years).
Main Measures:
Five clinical static endurance tests of trunk muscles such as: Sorensen test, prone isometric chest raise test, prone double straight-leg raise test, supine isometric chest raise test and supine double straight-leg raise test were measured in each group.
Results:
The result of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis revealed that in a separate analysis of data for men and women, among all tests, the prone double straight-leg raise test had the highest sensitivity, specificity and predictive value in low back pain compared with other performed tests.
Conclusions:
It seems that the prone double straight-leg raise test has more sensitivity, specificity and predictive value in low back pain than other tests and could be used as a useful clinical method for testing the spinal muscle endurance to predict the probability of the occurrence of low back pain.
