Tech neck: hands-on treatment, supervised exercise, or exercise on your own?
As COVID-19 pushes more people to work from home, we’re seeing much more cases of neck pain due to incorrect ergonomic setup and associated postural faults. While research continues to support conservative treatment methods, much debate still lies in what game plan per se yields the most positive outcomes for this population.
The study:
A randomized controlled trial of 60 participants who reported neck pain and presented with “forward head posture rounded shoulders posture” sought the effects of hands-on manual therapy (MT), stability exercises (SE) and home exercise programs (HEP), over a six-week period.
Group 1: Received MT and performed SE (3 times a week, supervised)
Group 2: Performed SE (3 times a week, supervised)
Group 3: Performed HEP (control group)
Data would be collected pre-, post-, and 1-month after intervention.
The results:
Statistically significant changes (p<0.05) were noted for the following:
Group 1 had significantly improved pain levels post-intervention and even better reports at the 1-month follow-up.
Groups 1 and 2 demonstrated significantly improved Progressive Iso-inertial Lifting Evaluation (PILE) scores (aka capacity to lift heavy things) post-intervention compared to pre-intervention.
Groups 1 and 2 also demonstrated significantly improved “forward head posture rounded shoulders posture”, measured by favorable shoulder and head angles post-intervention, compared to pre-intervention.
Group 3 participants had no significant change in symptoms, function or postural alignment throughout the study.
What this means:
People with non-specific, generalized neck pain may benefit from a combination of hands-on manual therapy and a supervised stability exercise program, as the study shows it can improve pain levels, function and postural alignment. Another important observation is that Group 3, which only partook in an unsupervised home exercise program, showed no significant improvement in symptoms. In other words, exercise can be otherwise useless if not performed correctly.
See the vid below for examples of tech neck neutralizing exercises.
REFERENCES:
Fathollahnejad K, Letafatkar A, Hadadnezhad M. The effect of manual therapy and stabilizing exercises on forward head and rounded shoulder postures: a six-week intervention with a one-month follow-up study. BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2019;20(1):86. Published 2019 Feb 18. doi:10.1186/s12891-019-2438-y