Background & Objective:Low back pain is a frequent problem faced by the majority of people at some point in their lifetime. Exercise therapy has been advocated an effective treatment for chronic low back pain. However, there is lack of consensus on the best exercise treatment and numerous studies are underway. Conclusive studies are lacking especially in this part of the world. Thisstudy was designed to compare the effectiveness of specific stabilization exercises with routine physical therapy exerciseprovided in patients with nonspecific chronic mechanical low back pain.Methods:This is single blinded randomized control trial that was conducted at the department of physical therapy Orthopedic and Spine Institute, Johar Town, Lahore in which 120 subjects with nonspecific chronic low back pain participated. Subjects with the age between 20 to 60 years and primary complaint of chronic low back pain were recruited after giving an informed consent. Participants were randomly assigned to two treatment groups A & B which were treated with core stabilization exercise and routine physical therapy exercise respectively. TENS and ultrasound were given as therapeutic modalities to both treatment groups. Outcomes of the treatment were recorded using Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pretreatment, at 2nd, 4th and 6th week post treatment.Results:The results of this study illustrate that clinical and therapeutic effects of core stabilization exercise program over the period of six weeks are more effective in terms of reduction in pain, compared to routine physical therapy exercise for similar duration. This study found significant reduction in pain across the two groups at 2nd, 4th and 6th week of treatment with p value less than 0.05. There was a mean reduction of 3.08 and 1.71 on VAS across the core stabilization group and routine physical therapy exercise group respectively.Conclusion:Core stabilization exercise is more effective than routine physical therapy exercise in terms of greater reduction in pain in patients with non-specific low back pain.

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Background The objective of the study was to compare the effects of neuromobilization (NM) techniques and routine physiotherapy on pain and functional disability in patients having shoulder impingement syndrome (SIS). Present study was aimed to discover evidence based conservative and cost effective remedy on pain and functional disability. Study design Single blinded randomized control clinical trial. Methods A total of 80 patients with SIS were randomly assigned into care and experimental groups (40 in each group). After the baseline assessment routine physiotherapy was executed on both groups, while NM was applied additionally to experimental group. Pain and functional disability score were evaluated by Visual Analogue Scale and University of California at Los Angeles rating score at baseline, 5th and 11th week. Differences in outcome between groups were evaluated with clinical improvement. Results The experimental group compared with care group at 11th week had lower mean pain score 2.15(1.66–2.64) vs 4.90(4.41–5.40); between group difference, 1.82; 95% (CI), − 2.38 to − 1.25; P < 0.001 and Partial ƞ2 = 0.33, similarly functional disability score 28.58(27.32–29.83) vs 20.10(18.84–21.36); between group difference,5.62; 95%CI, (4.32–6.92); P< 0.001 and Partial ƞ2 = 0.49 respectively. In experimental group NM was a more effective technique to reduce the pain severity and disability in SIS patients as compare to care group. Conclusion Neuromobilization techniques in addition to routine physiotherapy were significantly effective for the treatment of SIS. Trial registration IRCT20190121042445N1, Registered 19 February 2019.

Background & Objective: Routine physiotherapy has been advocated was an effective treatment for internal shoulder impingement syndrome. However, there is lack of best exercise treatment and lots of studies are under consideration. The objective of the study was to compare the effects of Neuromobilization and routine physiotherapy on pain in patients having shoulder internal impingement syndrome. Methods: This is a single blinded randomized control clinical trial that was conducted at Social Security Hospital Gujranwala in which 80 patients with SIS were participated. The duration of study was from September 2016 to March 2018. Patients were recruited after giving an informed consent and were randomly assigned to either control or experimental group which was treated with routine physiotherapy and routine physiotherapy plus neuromobilization respectively; pain was assessed by Numeric Rating Scale at base line, 5th and 11th week. Results: The experimental group compared with control group at 11th week had lower mean pain score 2.15(1.66-2.64) vs 4.90(4.41-5.40); between group difference, 1.82; 95% (CI), -2.38 to -1.25; P < 0.001 and Partial ŋ2=0.33. These results show that pain score is much improved in experimental group. Conclusion: Neuromobilization along with physical therapy is more effective as compared to physiotherapy alone. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1545 How to cite this:Akhtar M, Karimi H, Gilani SA, Ahmad A. Effects of routine physiotherapy with and without neuromobilization in the management of internal shoulder impingement syndrome: A randomized controlled trial. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(4):---------.  doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1545 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Renewable energy technologies are developing day by day. One of the novel renewable energy technologies is microbial fuel cells (MFC). MFCs are eco-friendly as it uses electroactive bacteria (exoelectrogens) to generate electricity by using organic and inorganic waste from the wastewater. Electricity generation and wastewater treatment are its primary applications. The construction of MFC consists of the electrodes which may be modified by using nanoparticles (gold and iron oxide) or pre-treatment methods (sonication and autoclave sterilization). This technology is further studied for the detection and reduction of toxic heavy metals in wastewater. The MFCs are also modified into microbial electrolysis cells to make biofuel such as hydrogen. The present review is based on the applications of the MFC, key challenges, and modification strategies.