

One of the biggest problems in the treatment of chronic low back pain is that low back pain patients are very heterogeneous. This means that there is no single magic pill treatment for every chronic low back pain patient, and it is, therefore, helpful to further categorize these patients.
One such classification is described by the clinical prediction rule of Hicks et al. (2005). This clinical prediction rule is designed to determine if your patient is likely to benefit from a stabilization exercise program.
Three or more out of the following four signs or tests increase the odds for success with a stabilization exercise program by a factor of 4.0:
At the same time, if you want to rule out a stabilization exercise program for your patient, you can apply the following rule if two or more of the following four items arepresent. The odds for success with a stabilization exercise program decreases by a factor of 0.18:
In the study, the exercise program consisted of different exercises for the transverse abdominals, the multifidus, the quadratus lumborum, as well as the oblique abdominals.
If you are curious about another clinical prediction rule in the spine, check out the following post: