People Lifting Patterns—A Reference Dataset for Practitioners

Many health professionals do not use correct person transfer techniques in their daily practice. This results in damage to the paraspinal musculature over time, resulting in lower back pain and injuries. In this work, we propose an approach for the accurate multimodal measurement of people lifting and related motion patterns for ergonomic education regarding the application of correct patient transfer techniques. Several examples of person lifting were recorded and processed through accurate instrumentation and the well-defined measurements of kinematics, kinetics, surface electromyography of muscles as well as multicamera video. This resulted in a complete measurement protocol and unique reference datasets of correct and incorrect lifting schemes for caregivers and patients. This understanding of multimodal motion patterns provides insights for further independent investigations

Symptom Variability and Early Symptom Regression in the MAPP Study: A Prospective Study of Urological Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome

PurposeWe examined symptom variability in men and women with urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome. We describe symptom fluctuations as related to early symptom regression and its effect on estimated 1-year symptom change. We also describe a method to quantify patient specific symptom variability.Materials and methodsSymptoms were assessed biweekly in 424 subjects with urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome during 1 year. To evaluate the impact of early symptom regression subjects were classified as improved, no change or worse according to the rate of change using 1) all data, 2) excluding week 0 and 3) excluding weeks 0 and 2. Patient specific, time varying variability was calculated at each interval using a sliding window approach. Patients were classified as high, medium or low variability at each time and ultimately as high or low variability overall based on the variability for the majority of contacts.ResultsPrior to excluding early weeks to adjust for early symptom regression 25% to 38% and 5% to 6% of patients were classified as improved and worse, respectively. After adjustment the percent of patients who were improved or worse ranged from 15% to 25% and 6% to 9%, respectively. High and low variability phenotypes were each identified in 25% to 30% of participants.ConclusionsPatients with urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome show symptom variability. At study enrollment patients had worse symptoms on average, resulting in a regression effect that influenced the estimated proportion of those who were improved or worse. Prospective studies should include a run-in period to account for regression to the mean and other causes of early symptom regression. Further, symptom variability may be quantified and used to characterize longitudinal symptom profiles of urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome