Comparing the Effect of Vibration Therapy and that of Muscle Relaxation on Nurses with Low Back Pain

Lower back pain is a common musculoskeletal disorder in nurses. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the effect of vibration therapy and that of muscle relaxation methods on nurses with low back pain. In this clinical trial, 110 nurses with low back pain were randomly assigned to two intervention groups (group I and group II). The research instrument were written consent form, demographic questionnare, numeric pain rating scale and pain assessment flowsheet. In group I, the nurses received vibration therapy once a day for 10 minutes for two weeks. In the group II, the nurses performed muscle relaxation once a day for 20 minutes for two weeks. Then, pain rate was measured before and after the intervention in both groups. The data were analyzed by SPSS 20 and α =0.05 was considered significant. There were no significant difference between the two groups in terms of demographic information (p>0.05). Before the intervention, there was no significant difference between the the groups in terms of average low back pain (P = 0.0814). After the intervention, both groups experienced a statistically significant decrease in pain compared to that before intervention (p≤0.001). The nurses’ low back pain in the muscle relaxation group decreased from 5.8 to 4.25 and from 5.9 to 3.1 in the vibration therapy group. There was a significant difference between the groups in terms of the average  pain severity after the intervention (p=0.044) so that the pain reduction rate in the vibration therapy group was higher than that in the muscle relaxation group. The results showed that vibration therapy and muscle relaxation reduced the nurses’ low back pain. In other words, both methods were effective. However, vibration therapy was more effective.