Effect of exercise for non-specific neck pain and mechanical neck pain: from research to practice

Abstract

Neck pain is a common symptom can be found in both genders and all ages, especially in middle age group. The most common musculoskeletal disorder is neck pain.The other neck pain without any specific disease detection and non-neurological deficit is defined non-specific neck pain (NSNP) or mechanical neck pain (MNP)which leads to chronic condition if there is no treatment in 3 months. However, there is no specific clinical diagnosis of the NSNP or MNP and effective therapeutic guideline has not been known. Physical therapy can alleviate the neck pain by using many therapeutic techniques such as joint mobilization, mechanical modality, thermotherapy agents, manual massage therapy and therapeutic exercise Nowadays, various patternsof neck exercisetherapy are introduced. Many previous studies showed the evidence of therapeutic effect, and found that the specific neck and scapular exercise therapy can effectively reduce neck pain symptoms and functional neck disability in NSNP and MNP in both the short-term and long-term effects. Therefore, the objectives of this article are to review the basic knowledge based on clinical research and to suggest therapeutic neck exercise for this type of neck pain