The effectiveness of home-based exercise programs for low back pain patients

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of home-based exercise programs for low back pain (LBP) patients. [Subjects and Methods] The study subjects were 49 volunteer chronic LBP patients. Home-based exercises that had been specifically modified for the individual patients were prescribed for a period of four weeks, and the volunteers were asked to return for a control evaluation at the end of this period. Exercise adherence and correct performance, pain intensity, disability, endurance, and flexibility were compared between pre- and post intervention, and correlations between exercise adherence and correct performance with, pain intensity score, endurance, disability, and flexibility were investigated. [Results] Twenty-eight patients (57.14%) did not return for the control evaluation. The mean age of the patients who participated in this control test was 43.24 ± 10.89 years. The adherence rate of the home exercise program was 54.10 ± 26.01%, and the correctly performed execises score was 2.7 ± 1.9. All of the parameters had improved at the final evaluation; however, there was no correlation among the parameters. [Conclusion] Clinicians should be aware of the patient's adherence level when recommending home-based exercises, and should also realize that exercises might be performed inaccurately in an unsupervised environment.