Nowadays, postural misalignments prevalence in students is increasingly evident and its
early detection is the best way to prevent complications in adulthood. It is also known that postural
problems appear to have association between them. The aim of this study was to characterize
and study the association between spine, scapular and pelvic girdles postural misalignments in
213 school students (124 males and 89 females), aged between 10 and 20 years, from Escola Básica e
Secundária de Santa Maria (EBSSM). To understand the relation between postural misalignments we
compare the head positioning with the shoulder girdle, the shoulder girdle with the dorsal spine
and the lumbar spine with the pelvic girdle. The postural assessment was made by visual scan
analysis in a symmetrograph based on photogrammetry and the Adams. We found high percentages
of postural misalignments in all subjects. High prevalence was observed in the posterior view
of the frontal plane in the head lateral flexion, shoulders vertical asymmetry, scoliosis and in the
presence of gibbosity, whereas, in the right view of the sagittal plane forward head posture and
protracted shoulders were observed. The lumbar scoliosis was more prevalent in subjects with iliac
crest’s asymmetry (p < 0.001) and forward head posture was significantly related to the subjects
with protracted shoulders (p = 0.010). The protracted shoulders were more prevalent in subjects
with dorsal hyperkyphosis (p = 0.048) and lumbar hyperlordosis was related to the subjects with
pelvic anteversion (p < 0.001). The students’ postural assessment showed a wide variety of postural
misalignments. It also seems evident that there is a relationship between their occurrences. It should
be highlighted the importance of postural assessment in physical education (PE) classes to determine
postural misalignments among school students.
This work is supported by the Douro Higher Institute of Educational Sciences and the
Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P. (project UIDB/04045/2021).
