A study of five cervicocephalic relocation tests in three different subject groupsFaculty of Medicine, The University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
Department of Physiotherapy, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Objective: To compare head relocation accuracy in traumatic (whiplash), insidious onset neck pain patients and asymptomatic subjects when targeting a natural head posture (NHP) and complex predetermined positions. Design: A case–control study. Setting: University-based musculoskeletal research clinic. Participants: Sixty-three volunteers divided into three groups of similar gender and age: Group 1 (n = 21) an asymptomatic group; group 2 (n = 20) insidious onset neck pain; group 3 (n = 22) a history of whiplash injury. Intervention: Five randomly ordered tests designed to detect relocation accuracy of the head. Outcome measures: A 3-Space Fastrak system measured the mean absolute relocation error of three trials of each relocation test. Results: A significant difference was found between groups in one of the tests targeting the NHP (p = 0.001). Post-hoc pairwise comparisons revealed a significant difference (p £ 0.05) between the asymptomatic group and each symptomatic group. The difference between the symptomatic groups just failed to reach significance (p = 0.07). None of the other four tests revealed significant differences. Conclusion: The test of targeting the NHP indicates that relocation inaccuracy exists in patients with neck pain with a trend to suggest that the deficit may be greater in whiplash patients. Tests employing unfamiliar postures or more complex movement were not successful in differentiating subject groups.
Clinical Rehabilitation, Vol. 17, No. 7,
768-774 (2003) This article has been cited by other articles:
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