PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?

Response: The main findings of this study showed:

• A neck-specific strengthening program targeting all planes of cervical movement led to a statistically significant improvement in multidirectional neck strength as well as pain and disability, with large effect sizes observed for all outcomes.
• A decrease in cervical extension strength was a significant predictor for an increase in pain.
• Our analysis of the predictors for neck pain and disability showed a large variation that was not accounted for in our study. We hypothesise that elements we didn’t assess which have been mentioned in other research such as psychiatric distress, anxiety, catastrophising, fear avoidance, fear of re-injury and increased awareness of pain make up the remainder of the predictors.

PainRelief.com: What should readers take away from your report?

• Multidirectional neck-specific progressive resistance exercises are beneficial for the treatment of chronic neck pain and disability.
• Neck extension strength was the only strength measure found to be a significant predictor of pain scores, suggesting that targeting the neck extensor muscles should be a key component in the treatment of chronic neck pain.
• There was no control group available to compare the effect of our program to, however due to the chronic nature of the symptoms it is unlikely that the observed results in this study are due to spontaneous recovery.

PainRelief.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work?

Response: In our study we analysed the results after only nine sessions of the intervention, therefore future research should further explore the use of the MCU in chronic neck pain. Several topics to be further explored in research were highlighted by our study including undertaking two separate randomised control trials. The first to identify if our neck-specific strengthening program is effective when compared to standard physiotherapy, and the second to compare our program with other neck-specific strengthening programs. This will help to determine if one treatment is more effective at reducing pain or disability, which will assist in guiding clinical practice.

Citation:

Cox, LGW, Savur, KT, De Nardis, RJ, Iles, RA. Progressive resistance exercise for improving pain and disability in chronic neck pain: A case series. Physiother Res Int. 2020;e1863. https://doi.org/10.1002/pri.1863

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Last Updated on July 20, 2020 by PainRelief.com