Low Back Pain: How Physiotherapy Assessment and Treatment Help

01What Happens in an Assessment?

Your physiotherapist will ask when the pain began, what makes it better or worse, whether it travels into the leg, and how it affects sleep, walking, lifting, and work. They may check spinal movement, hip movement, lower-limb strength, sensation, reflexes, balance, and functional tasks such as sitting-to-standing.

02How Physiotherapy Helps

Treatment is usually active and progressive. It may include education about staying safely active, graded mobility exercises, trunk and hip strengthening, movement retraining, manual techniques when appropriate, and a home program matched to your current ability. The correct exercise depends on your examination; a painful exercise should not be continued simply because it is popular online.

03Managing Activity Between Sessions

Short, regular walks and changing position frequently are often more useful than prolonged bed rest. Start with a tolerable amount, monitor how you feel later that day and the next morning, and increase gradually. Your physiotherapist can modify lifting, sleep, and work positions without asking you to avoid normal movement forever.

Seek urgent medical assessment for new bladder or bowel changes, numbness around the groin, rapidly worsening leg weakness, fever with severe back pain, major trauma, or unexplained weight loss. This guide is educational and does not replace an examination.

Textbook basis: Principles are synthesised from Kisner & Colby’s Therapeutic Exercise, O’Sullivan’s Physical Rehabilitation, and Goodman & Fuller’s Pathology for the Physical Therapist.