BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Gestational low back pain is a major complaint during gestation being responsible for many negative impacts on the quality of life of pregnant women. This study aimed at determining the prevalence of types of low back pain and their presentations in pregnant women. METHOD: This is a transversal descriptive study carried out with 21 pregnant women who attended a prenatal program in the city of Petrolina-PE. Patients were evaluated with specific tests to classify low back pain and have answered a questionnaire with socio-demographic and obstetric information. SPSS program's descriptive statistics and confidence interval were used for data analysis (CI95%). RESULTS: From all evaluated pregnant women, 95.23% [CI95% 76.18 - 99.88] have reported low back pain during gestation, being that 71.43% [CI95% 47.82 - 88.72] had it previously to gestation. Most pregnant women, 57.14% [CI95% 34.02 - 78.18], have reported pain lasting for more than 60 minutes. The combination of low back pain and posterior pelvic pain was observed in 66.65% [CI95% 43.03 - 85.41] of patients and 28.58% [CI95% 11.28 - 52.18] had just low back pain. CONCLUSION: There has been a high prevalence of low back pain among evaluated pregnant women, showing that the use of educational, preventive and rehabilitating measures is critical due to the negative impact of pregnancy-induced changes on quality of life of pregnant women. The inclusion of physical therapists as participants of Family Health Program actions with groups of pregnant women is critical to improve assistance practices.
Low back pain; Pain; Physical therapy; Woman's health
