Clinical Lumbar Instability and Core Stabilization Exercise: A Literature Review

Clinical lumbar instability is increasingly recognized as one of the significant causes of chronic low back pain. The patients with clinical lumbar instability require the effective exercise intervention to improve the stability of their lumbar spine. This article reveals the etiology and clinical diagnosis of clinical lumbar instability, the effective treatment as core stabilization exercise (CSE) and also provides some relevant researches on CSE for improving outcome measurements in patients with clinical lumbar instability. Commonly, clinical signs and the specific clinical tests including instability catch sign, apprehension sign, painful catch test and prone instability test are considered as clinical diagnostic criteria due to absence of radiological findings in patients with clinical lumbar instability. Moderate to high impacted evidences on the effectiveness of CSE to improve pain-related outcomes and deep trunk muscle activation have been reported in patients with clinical lumbar instability but further studies regarding long-term effectiveness of CSE and the use of precise instrument to detect deep trunk muscle activation are still required.