A Summary of How Employees at 22 Work Places in the City of Trollhättan, Sweden, Have Experienced the Daily Use of Mastercare – The Swedish Back Care System.
A summary – Trollhättan Sweden
n 1992, Trollhättan ”City Health”, in conjunction with Mastercare AB/Nordic Health AB, performed a project in order to observe whether daily training o
n the Mastercare table would affect the experience of pain in people with moderate problems from the movement apparatus. We were also interested in finding out whether
the training would affect general well-being.
A Mastercare table was placed a 22 of the city’s work places in February, to be utilized daily by a total of 144 people during approximately three months. Each works place also had a contact person/instructor, who had been trained one-half day by staff from ”City Health” and Mastercare AB/Nordic Back Health AB.
A total of 115 people (81%), from 19 work places, responded to all of the questions asked in this study. Of these, 60 used the table for at least 2 months.
At the end of this project, the participants were asked to describe how the training had affected their neck/shoulder and lower back pain experiences, in accordance with a so called visual analogous scale. This evaluation included both pain intensity and problem frequency.
Totally, the participants indicated both neck/shoulder and lower back improvements. These subjective changes included both pain intensity and problem frequency.
Based on previous case descriptions and traction treatment of lower back pain, it was to be expected that lower back pain experiences would decrease. But it was somewhat unexpected that the participants also indicated fewer neck/shoulder problems.
Thus; results from this project indicate that training on the Mastercare table could be of value not only in the treatment of patients with lower back problems, but also when treating neck/shoulder pain. In order to further explore if this is the case, a new project will begin in 1993, to more specifically examine the effects of daily training on this table by patients with neck/shoulder problems.
Trollhättan, November 27, 1992.
Claes Lenngerd, M.D.
Company Physician.