"Given the enormous global cost of chronic low back pain, increasing an individual's capacity to self-manage their pain, while reducing the need for therapist supervision, should be a priority," he said.
GAMES THERAPY PAIN 12 AND OLDER RESOGUN VELOCITY SERIES
Senior author Associate Professor Paulo Ferreira, from the University's Faculty of Health Sciences said the recent Lancet series on low back pain highlighted the need for low cost and accessible treatments for low back pain. "Older people with poor physical functioning also prefer home-based exercises as travelling to treatment facilities can be difficult." "This home-based program has great potential as supervised physiotherapy visits can be costly and people who live in remote or rural areas can face barriers accessing these services. "These exercise programs could be a unique solution to increase older people's motivation to self-manage their chronic LBP through home-exercise and improve their ability to continue with their daily activities despite having pain. These features are extremely motivating and likely explain why compliance to this program was much higher than other trials that have instructed patients to exercise without supervision. "Video-game exercises are interactive, have video and audio instructions, provide feedback on a patient's technique and scores them on the basis of their performance.
Our study however had high compliance to video-game exercises, with participants completing on average 85 per cent of recommended sessions. "Structured exercise programs are recommended for the management of chronic LBP, but there is poor compliance to unsupervised home-exercises. "Participants practiced flexibility, strengthening and aerobic exercises for 60 minutes, three times per week at home without therapist supervision, and the effect of the 8-week video-game program was comparable to exercise programs completed under the supervision of a physiotherapist. "Our study found that home-based video game exercises are a valuable treatment option for older people suffering from chronic low back pain as participants experienced a 27 percent reduction in pain and a 23 percent increase in function from the exercises," said Dr Joshua Zadro, a physiotherapist and postdoctoral research fellow from the University of Sydney School of Public Health. Chronic LBP becomes more severe and disabling with age, and can have a significant impact on physical functioning such as balance, strength and walking speed. Low back pain (LBP) is the most disabling and costly musculoskeletal condition worldwide with most of this burden among older people who develop chronic symptoms. Published today in Physical Therapy journal, this first-of-its-kind study investigated the effectiveness of self-managed home-based video game exercises in people over 55 years using a Nintendo Wii-Fit-U.
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