Acute low back pain part 2 - How to perform a great objective assessment

A great objective assessment of patients with acute low back pain is vital for getting fantastic results and improving yoru patients pain. Your objective assessment will help you identify whether to use exercises, manual therapy, repeated movements, neurodynamics or another treatment. You can target your treatment at the areas and structures that provide your patients with immediate improvements in pain and range of movement.

This online course is designed to help improve your assessment of patients with acute low back pain, so that you know exactly where and how to treat. Practical demonstrations of each of the assessment tests will help improve your skills and confidence with acute low back pain.

You will discover:

• How to perform a great objective assessment
• How to relate your objective findings to your subjective history
• How to get the most relevant information from your assessment
• Indicators of when to treat the lumbar spine, hip or SIJ
• Common red flags you need to be aware of
• Movements you need to assess in each low back pain patient
• When to use special tests such as the quadrant, or single leg extension test and what information these provide
• How you can assess low back pain patients to identify the areas you need to treat
• What tests can you perform to help differentiate lumbar spine from hip and sacroiliac (SI) pain
• How to identify whether to use exercise, manual therapy, repeated movements or other treatment
• How to improve your manual therapy assessment
• Common manual therapy errors, and how to improve your manual therapy assessment
• Practical demonstrations of manual therapy assessment
• How you can know if neurodynamics are involved in your patients pain
• How to tie together your active movement, passive movements, lumbar spine, hip & SIJ assessment tests, manual therapy assessment, neuro and neurodynamic results into a simple cohesive assessment that will help guide your treatment

This online course follows on from Acute low back pain - How to use your subjective assessment to improve your acute low back pain results.

In the next video - Treatment of acute low back pain, available shortly, you will discover:

• Practical demonstrations of how to treat acute low back pain patients
• How to get great results when treating acute LBP
• How to use the information you gain from your assessment in your treatment
• Clinical reasoning with your low back pain patients
• What is the latest evidence on treatment of acute low back pain?
• How does the evidence guide our treatment?
• Is the use of manual therapy, neurodynamics or repeated movements supported in the literature for acute low back pain?
• How to ensure your treatment is effective

Part 1 covers:

• Goals of your objective assessment
• Why reproducing your patients pain is important
• How can you identify potential structures involved
• Common indicators of when you need to treat the lumbar spine, SIJ or hip
• Hip joint screening tests and when they are helpful
• When the hip may be a driver of your patients low back pain
• Identifying neurodynamic involvement or neural irritation

Part 2 covers:

• Red flags
  • Central spinal stenosis and common symptoms
  • Spondylolisthesis
  • Contraindications and precautions to spinal mobilisation - absolute and relative
  • Contraindications and precautions to spinal manipulation - absolute and relative
  • What do do when red flags are present
• Should manual therapy be utilised in treatment of Acute LBP?

Part 3 covers:

• Identifying irritability and resting pain
• Observation - which aspects are actually important?
• How to assess pain during function
• Explaining how far patients should take their active movements
• Lumbar active movements
• Asterisk signs
• Movement quality assessment in flexion
• Is movement quality important and relevant to your patient?
• How does lateral flexion pain or restriction guide your treatment
• Quadrant test - how and when to perform
• Single leg hyperextension test

Part 4 covers:

• Thoracic rotation - when to perform this
• Neuro assessment in standing
• Neurodynamic assessment
• Hip assessment
• Hip quadrant
• SIJ tests

Part 5 covers:

• Repeated movements
• When to (and when not to) include flexion as a stretch or repeated movement
• Treatment positions - when to treat in sidelie, supine or prone
• Get confident with surface anatomy of the SIJ and lumbar spine
• How to perform lumbar PPIVM's (Passive physiological intervertebral movements)
• PPIVM variations
• When to use PPIVM's

Part 6 covers:

• How should you choose whether to treat painful or restricted areas?
• PAIVM assessment
• Transverse glides - when these are a good treatment option
• What to do if your patient is uncomfortable getting into prone
• Identifying the pain area in prone and why this is important
• PAIVM assessment in prone
• Further Lumbar surface anatomy
• How to identify the relevant information with your PAIVM assessment

Part 7 covers:

• How to vary your treatment position based on your patient presentation, painful movements and irritability
• How and when to treat in hip flexion, neurodynamic stretch positions or extension
• Repeated extensions in prone - when to use, and how to know these are a valuable treatment
• When to avoid repeated extensions
• Reassessing asterisk signs