Physical therapy treatments for low back pain in children and adolescents: a meta-analysis

Table 5 Results of the mixed-effects multiple meta-regression to examine the differential effectiveness of the treatments ( k = 16)

Predictor	b _j	SE	Z	p
Exercise	.283	.267	1.059	.289
Back education	.031	.329	.093	.926
Therapeutic physical conditioning	.536	.326	1.643	.100
Manual therapy	.508	.286	1.777	.075
Full model: Q _R (4) = 12.842, p = .012; R ² = .573
Q _E (11) = 27.578, p = .004
Predictive equation: d’ = 0.0107 + 0.283Exercise + 0.031Back education + 0.536* Therapeutic physical conditioning + 0.508*Manual therapy.

k: number of studies. b _j : regression coefficient. SE: standard error of the regression coefficient. Z: Z test for examining the significance of each treatment. p: probability level associated to the corresponding statistical test. Q _R: statistic to examine the significance of the full model. Q _E: statistic to assess the misspecification of the full model. d ^’: predicted effect size.

ISSN: 1471-2474