BACKGROUND: Although horse simulator riding is very beneficial for patients with several diseases, there are few studies relating to treating patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP) specifically in terms of physiological and psychological outcome measures. It also has not been medically verified yet on the aspects of psychological responses and physiological changes. As well as there are not known how it can decrease the pain, how it can increase the physical conditioning, and how much good time rides a horse simulator. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the time-effects of an 8 week horse simulator exercise on body composition, visual analogue scale (VAS), and isokinetic torques of the trunk and hip joints in patients with CLBP. METHODS: Forty one young men presenting with CLBP were divided into 4 groups: LBP control group (LCG), LBP horse simulator 10 min riding group (LHS10G), LBP horse simulator 20 min riding group (LHS20G), and LBP horse simulator 30 min riding group (LHS30G), respectively. Three horse simulator exercise groups completed a rehabilitation exercise protocol for 5 days per week during 8 weeks. VAS was used to measure the severity of CLBP and functional disability for checking psychological responses. Body composition measured by bioelectrical analyzer and isokinetic torques were used to consider the physiological pre-post changes. RESULTS: Compared with the baseline, the body composition indices did not change significantly. However, muscle mass and fat mass showed increasing and decreasing tendencies in the LHS30G. The VAS indices showed significant decrease in back pain including other 12 items. A significant decrease was observed for all items except for drug relief. Especially, most of items in the LHS20G were lower than those of the other groups in the post hoc comparison. The horse simulator exercise enhanced the isokinetic strength of trunk and hip muscles. Due to the increased strength, trunk flexor/extensor ratio, hip flexor/extensor ratio, and hip abductor/adductor were close to reference values. The deficit in the ratio scores: hip flexor and extensor and hip abductor and adductor evened out after an experiment. Especially, these improvements were associated particularly with LHS20G. CONCLUSIONS: The horse simulator exercise positively affected psychophysiological responses in patients with CLBP. However, with respect to pain, the 20 min horseback riding group was associated with the best results.

| Abstract |1 )PURPOSE: This study compared the effectiveness of trunk control exercise performed on an unstable surface with that of general balance exercise on dynamic balance in the patients with chronic stroke. METHODS:The persons of this study were thirty-seven chronic stroke patients were recruited and randomly divided into 2 groups; (1) those who performed trunk control exercise on a foam roll and (2) those who performed general balance exercise. The exercises were performed 5 times a week for 4 weeks. To determine the effectiveness of the 2 types of exercises, we measured dynamic balance at the beginning of the exercises and again after 4 weeks at the completion of exercises program. †Corresponding Author : kimsy@dju.kr This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. RESULTS:After 4 weeks of exercise, both the groups showed increased Berg's balance scale and timed-up-and-go test (p<.001) scores. However, Trunk control exercise group was more effective than general balance exercise group was in increasing the Berg's balance scale (p<.01) and timed-up-and-go test (p<.05) scores. CONCLUSION:We suggest that trunk control exercise may be effective in increasing the balance ability of patients with chronic stroke than general balance exercise. Thus, trunk control exercise is important for such patients. Further studies are needed for better understanding of the effectiveness of trunk control exercise in chronic stroke patients.

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