Introduction: More than half of women in different phases of pregnancy expresses low back pain. Researching the subject, we often come upon the terms low back pain and pelvic girdle pain. The two states are clearly distinguishable. Persistent low back pain and pelvic girdle pain are frequently reported problems by both pregnant women and women who've given birth and it can considerably affect the quality of life Body fitness exercise before pregnancy reduces risk of both low back pain and pelvic girdle pain during the first pregnancy and during any of the following pregnancies however in many cases cannot prevent the complications. Therefore, physical therapists utilize various manual therapy techniques to alleviate the pain and reduce the functional disability of patient. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to show the efficiency of the different manual therapy techniques in reducing back and pelvic girdle pain of pregnant women and of women in the months after birth by the means of analysis of the existing literature on the subject. Methods: Articles were sourced from the scientific databases PubMed, PEDro, Medline, CINAHL and Science Direct. Analysis included the articles published in English between 2008 and 2016 that studied the effects of manual therapy techniques on pain alleviation and redusing functional disability because of low back pain and/or pelvic girdle pain during pregnancy and after birth. Results: Nine studies were analised. Six studied the effects of manual therapy techniques during the pregnancy and three studied the effects of manual therapy techniques after birth. The findings confirm that manual therapy techniques have a positive effect on pain alleviation and reducing functional disability. Discussion and conclusion: Our analysis led to the conclusion that various manual therapy techniques help in alleviating low back pain and pelvic girdle pain and succeed in stopping the progression of functional disability. However, we cannot definitively state which of the techniques is the most effective in achieving the positive outcome as the studies we analysed used different admission cirteria, different methodology and different sample sizes among others. To definitively state the efficiency of different methods, a high-quality controlled randomized study is required.
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