Can back pain caused by symptom-giving sacroiliac joint relaxation ...

0. Introduction
Can osteopathic treatment reduce back pain in pregnancy caused by sacroiliac joint
relaxation? This Master’s thesis will try to answer this question.
In my daily work as an osteopath I have recognised my personal interest in the most
diverse possibilities to treat women osteopathically during their pregnancy. Frequent
positive feedback after having treated pregnant women was a motivation for me to
investigate in this field. In fact it was during my wife's pregnancy, who gave birth to
our daughter Iris in spring 2006, that the idea for this empirical study came to my
mind.
In their article published in 2000 [9] DiGiovanna and Schiowitz describe the role of
osteopathy during pregnancy very concisely: Osteopathic care throughout pregnancy
provides the woman with the special benefits of adjusting the functions of her body to
the demands of the progressing pregnancy. [9, p. 459] When treating pregnant
women it is, time and again, a great challenge to adapt one's therapeutic techniques
to the changes and developments taking place during pregnancy. There are studies
[22, 23, 64] which show that osteopathic manual treatment (OMT) influences the birth
process in a positive way, but there are hardly any studies [25] which account for a
positive influence on mothers' health during pregnancy.
My study intends to show that OMT can considerably reduce back pain caused by
SIJ relaxation which appears physiologically during pregnancy. As SIJ stability
depends on various biomechanical factors [24], it seems obvious to me that great
positive effects can be achieved by the application of OMT.
The hypothesis of my study reads as follows: After having treated a pregnant woman
suffering from back pain due to sacroiliac joint relaxation three times with OMT, it is
possible to demonstrate, by means of the two parameters pain intensity and quality
of life, that the discomfort of a pregnant woman is clearly reduced in a given period of
time after OMT compared to the discomfort in a given period of time before
therapeutic intervention. For this purpose I used a study design of repeated
measurements with non-randomised samples.
As the period of pregnancy is a very delicate time which is sometimes accompanied
by diverse complications [13, 38], it is an interesting challenge for osteopathy to
adapt OMT to the needs of pregnant women in a way that significant improvements
Master’s Thesis Wolfgang Aspalter 9