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Low back pain (LBP) is a common and complicated disorder which is influenced by a number of factors, among them is the lack of spinal stability provided by muscle contraction. One of the most important muscles which has a role in spinal stability is musculus transversus abdominis. A literature search for the period of 2000-11 was performed in PubMed, ProQuest, Science Direct, Thomson, EMBASE, OVID, CINAHL and MEDLINE databases using musculus Transversus Abdominis, ultrasonography, chronic nonspecific low back pain as keywords. Nineteen articles were selected according to the inclusion criteria of the study. Evidences demonstrated that thickness of transversus abdominis reduces in patients with chronic nonspecific low back pain (LBP) and ultrasonography seemed to be a valid and highly reliable instrument for measuring thickness of transversus abdominis in patients with LBP and healthy subjects on different positions and states. Studies demonstrated that there are adequate evidences to confirm the merit of ultrasonography in the assessment of musculus transversus abdominis in patients with chronic LBP and healthy subjects.

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Background and Objective: Lower back pain is one of the common discomforts of the occupational-musculoskeletal system, and the scope of motion measurement is important for assessing the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. This study was carried out to evaluate the reproducibility of the modified-modified Shober's technique (MMST) in measuring the range of motion of lumbar in patients with non-specific chronic low back pain.
Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, the range of motion of lumbar (flexion and extension) of 15 patients with non-specific chronic low back pain was measured in three times with modified – modified Shober's technique by two physiotherapists. To achieve this, the correlation coefficient (ICC) was used. Two measurements with an interval of one hour and one week were run to evaluate the reproducibility within-days and between-day, respectively.
Results: Flexion and extension were measured by the first assessor in within-day that showed a high reproducibility for flexion (ICC=0.88) and extension (ICC=0.71), findings also revealed an acceptable ICC for flexion (ICC=0.85) and extension (ICC=0.68) in between-days. The second assessor measurements of flexion and extension in whiten-day also presented high reproducibility for flexion (ICC=0.85) and extension (ICC=0.76); moreover, in between-days evaluation, correlation was found for flexion (ICC=0.81) and for extension (ICC=0.71).
Conclusion: This study showed that the modified-modified Shober's technique is applicable for measuring the reproducibility of range of lumbar motion in patients with non-specific chronic lumbar pain.