The Effects of Therapeutic Exercise on Lumbopelvic Pain among Pregnant Women Who Attend Primary Health Centers in Slemani Governorate

Background: Pregnancy is one of the enjoyable periods of a woman’s life that turns into an unpleasant experience of common undesirable complications, such as Lumbopelvic Pain (LPP). LPP is one of the common musculoskeletal dysfunctions that occur during pregnancy. The pain tends to increase with advancing pregnancy and negatively affects the quality of life.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of therapeutic exercise on pregnancy-related lumbopelvic pain and daily mobilities.

Methodology: A quasi-experimental research design was conducted on a purposive sample size of 110 pregnant women who had at least minimal pain located on one or more areas around their lumbar or pelvic region and attended primary health care centers. All participants had filled out an informed consent. 50 subjects were admitted into the control group and 60 subjects were admitted into the intervention group. The intervention group has attended a therapeutic exercise course which lasted 12 weeks, including four supervised and individualized sessions per month in a specialized clinic, with continued follow-up at home through phone call for the remaining two months. As instrument, Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) to assess pain intensity, third tool was Modified Pregnancy Mobility Index (MPMI) to assess daily mobility of the pregnant women was used before and after therapeutic exercise course intervention. Statistically, Chi-square test was used for analysed normal distributed data, and Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test were used for those non-normally distributed variables.

Result: The findings illustrated that there were statistically highly significant (P value=<0.001) differences between control to exercise group, after performing therapeutic exercise as intervention, in terms of pain intensity and daily mobility among pregnant women who complain from LPP.

Conclusion: practicing individualized therapeutic exercise that consist of stretching and stability exercise by pregnant women who complain from lumbopelvic pain had a positive effect on reducing pain intensity, as well as promoting physical daily mobility.