combined effects of postural education, therapeutic massage, segmental stretching, and motor control exercise in a 19-year-old male with chronic back pain and kypholordotic posture: a case report

Introduction: sagittal spine malalignment has been linked with a number of health consequences including pain, disability, and suboptimal quality of life. case presentation: we present a 19-year-old male with 3 years history of chronic back pain associated with kypholordotic posture. upon examination, lumbar hyperlordosis and thoracic hyperkyphosis were mainly associated with muscular imbalance around the chest, upper back, and lumbopelvic-hip region. the patient received treatment comprising postural education (pe), therapeutic massage (tm), segmental stretching exercise (sse), and motor control exercise (mce) twice a week for 8 weeks. the patient demonstrated a significant improvement in lumbar lordotic (83.80° to 76.30°) and thoracic kyphotic (65.20° to 60.60°) curves as measured by flexible ruler, back pain (7.0 cm to 1.0 cm) as measured by visual analogue scale, spine ranges of motion (flexion: 5.2cm to 7.5cm; extension: 3.5cm to 4.7cm) as measured by modified schober’s test, and functional disability (46.7% to 20.0%) as measured by modified oswestry disability index. conclusions: the results showed that the combination of pe, tm, sse, and mce was effective in improving sagittal spine alignment, back pain, spine range of movement, and function.