Thermal profile classification of the back of sportive and sedentary healthy individuals.

BACKGROUND: Infrared thermography (IRT) is a non-harmful, risk-free imaging technique and it has application for healthy and pathological population.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to evaluate the thermographic profiles of the back of sport practitioners from different disciplines and compare it with those of sedentary healthy individuals.

METHOD: The back of 160 healthy subjects were evaluated, and participants were grouped considering their sport practice: team sport (TS), individual sport (IS), weight training (WT), inactive (I). Three regions of interest were identified to analyze the cervical, thoracic and lumbar temperatures of the back.

RESULTS: The Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) resulted significant showing statistical differences for the cervical (p < 0.001), dorsal (p = 0.0011), and lumbar areas (p = 0.0366). The Tukey post-hoc test for pairwise comparison showed statistically significant differences between groups. For the cervical area significance was found between the IN and WT group (p = 0.002), the IN and IS group (p < 0.001), IN and TS group (p = 0.020). The dorsal area resulted significant between the IN and WT group (p = 0.007), the IN and IS group (p < 0.001), IN and TS group. The lumbar area showed significant differences only between the IN and WT group and the IN and IS group (p = 0.043).

CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that inactive individuals manifest a statistically significant higher temperature in the cervical, dorsal and lumbar area of the back compared to sportive individuals.