Effect of therapeutic exercises on pregnancy-related low back pain and pelvic girdle pain

About 76% of pregnant women report low back pain (LBP) at some point during pregnancy (27), 20% of women experience pelvic girdle pain (PGP) during pregnancy (3) and the cause is probably multifactorial. The pain tends to increase with advancing pregnancy and negatively affects quality of life. The purpose of this article is to assess whether application of the specific therapeutic exercises positively affects course and outcome of pregnancy-related LBP and PGP. Comprehensive database search was performed during June, 2012 within PubMed, OvidSP, and PEDro with the purpose of finding RCTs on exercise effects for pregnancy-related LBP and PGP. The number of found studies is relatively small, thirteen, with overall methodological quality not satisfactory and the results should be interpreted with caution. Moreover, the results are inconsistent and the effects recorded rather insignificant. Although type, frequency, intensity, and duration of exercises vary in the studies, authors mostly used stabilising exercises for lumbopelvic area and aquatic exercises. Preliminary results are promising, nevertheless the definitive clinical meaning still cannot be determined with certainty. Adding specific exercises to the usual prenatal care seems to reduce back and pelvic pain, however, higher quality research needs to be conducted to determine optimal plan of exercise intervention.