The effects of hip-targeted physical therapy interventions on low back pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis

To investigate the effects of physical therapy interventions of the hip on outcomes of pain and disability in patients with low back pain.

PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science, and SPORTDiscus were searched from inception to 18 April 2018.

The following inclusion criteria were required to be met: (1) randomized controlled trials; (2) populations with diagnosed low back pain; and (3) interventions that target the hip joint. Two researchers independently screened titles, abstracts, and full texts for inclusion.

Data was extracted for information related to patient demographics, specific interventions, and outcomes assessed. When studies demonstrated homogeneity on outcome measures, the mean differences or standardized mean differences with 95% confidence interval were calculated and pooled in a meta-analysis.

Six articles with a total of 387 participants were included in the review and meta-analysis. Specific intervention categories that were found in the search included: hydrotherapy (n = 1); exercise therapy (n = 4); and manual therapy (n = 2). Trivial effect size was found for the pain outcomes and small effect size was found for disability. All of these studies were found to have high risk of bias according the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool.

The meta-analyses from the pooled studies did not result in statistically significant reductions in either pain or disability with the addition of hip-targeted physical therapy interventions to patients with LBP.