Tração contínua mecânica no tratamento da dor lombar: revisão de literatura

Abstract

Introduction - Lower back pain can be considered as the disease of the century. According to some studies it affects 80% of the world’s population at some point in their lives. It is estimated that 90% of those people have their problem solved within two to four weeks, and that in 60% to 80% of people it will relapse within a year, which shows lower back pain as a common condition that affects the adult population. For treating lower back pain, physiotherapy provides a variety of methods, techniques and devices that aim to minimize or eliminate the symptoms. Among these is the continuous traction that is used clinically in patients with specific or nonspecific lower back pain with acute, sub-acute or chronic pain. Although the continuous mechanical traction is not widely used in the treatment of lower back pain, it is becoming more popular with technologically advanced equipment manufacturing, and due to the interest of professionals that believe in this noninvasive method. Objective - This study aims to review the literature on the use of continuous traction in the use of continuous mechanical traction in treating lower back pain. Methodology - The literature review was conducted in the electronic database PEDro, PubMed and MEDLINE from 2002 to 2012, in Portuguese and English. Results - The results found by researchers are still conflicted regarding the use of this technique. This review shows that groups that used continuous mechanical traction associated with other methods when compared to groups with other therapeutic modalities showed very similar results. Conclusion – We notice that the continuous traction does not influence treatment results.