Changes in chronic neck pain following the introduction of a visco-elastic polyurethane foam pillow and/or chiropractic treatment
Abstract
Background: Sleep ergonomics are increasingly prescribed as an adjunct treatment to chronic neck pain. Postulated benefits to maintaining the ideal sleeping posture are improved tissue repair in and around the facet joints, decrease in tension of associated musculature and better quality sleep.
Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine if the inclusion of a visco-elastic polyurethane (VEP) pillow could benefit the chiropractic treatment of chronic neck pain.
Setting: The study took place at a chiropractic training clinic in Johannesburg.
Method: Participants were randomly assigned to either a chiropractic treatment only group (CHI) (n = 15) or a chiropractic treatment with a VEP pillow group (CHI+P) (n = 15). Both groups underwent six chiropractic treatments spaced at 3–4-day intervals and the CHI+P were provided with a VEP pillow. Baseline and post-test measurements consisted of the initial Numerical Pain Rating Scale (NRS) and the Vernon–Mior Neck Pain and Disability Index (NDI).
Results: Both the CHI and CHI+P groups significantly (p ≤ 0.05) improved their NRS (p = 0.001 for both groups) and NDI (p = 0.001 and p = 0.000, respectively) scores. Furthermore, post hoc analysis indicated a significant difference at post-test between the two groups for NRS (p = 0.015), but not for NDI (p = 0.195). The CHI+P demonstrated an improved minimum clinically important difference (MCID) (43% vs. 73% for NRS and 59% vs. 71% for the NDI).
Conclusion: Findings of this study suggest that a VEP pillow could be included as an adjunct management tool to chiropractic treatment of chronic neck pain.
Keywords: cervical pain; cervical pillow; manipulation; manual therapy; mobilisation; sleep.
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publication rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Note: If you need to comply with your funding body policy, you can apply for the CC BY license after your manuscript is accepted for publication.
