Nonspecific chronic low back pain and incapacity level: influence of walking performance

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Chronic low back pain syndrome promotes several functional losses which impact quality of life of patients, and walking is one of the most impaired functions. Being chronic low back pain a syndrome with multiple etiologies, efforts to understand the relation between functional losses and etiologic factors are justified. This study aimed at correlating walking speed with pain perception, incapacity level (I) and condition of having or not chronic low back pain (group). METHODS: Sample was made up of volunteers with nonspecific low back pain (LG/n=8) and healthy subjects (CG/n=8). Incapacity level was obtained by Oswestry Incapacity Index during evaluation. Tests battery was divided in three sessions according to walking intensity, as follows: preferred self-selected speed (VP) and faster and slower speeds as compared to VP. In each session, volunteers walked for five minutes and at every minute pain was quantified by the analog scale. Kendal Tau test was used with p=0.05. RESULTS: Walking speed was not correlated with pain intensity, with incapacity level or with the group. However, group versus incapacity level, group versus pain, incapacity level versus pain were correlated with one another. CONCLUSION: Walking performance was not influenced by nonspecific chronic low back pain and by incapacity level.