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Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation: A potential solution for neck pain relief

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Created On: 22/11/2024

Text neck syndrome stems from prolonged use of smartphones, affecting people of all ages.

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Key take away

Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation potentially reduces neck pain and disability while improving posture, cervical range of motion, and muscle endurance in text neck syndrome-affected people.

Background

Text neck syndrome stems from prolonged use of smartphones, affecting people of all ages. A prospective, randomized controlled trial explored how proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) techniques can help to manage this condition.

Method

Participants were young adults (18-40 years old) who had used smartphones for over a year, spent more than 4 hours daily on their devices, experienced recurrent neck pain exacerbated by prolonged posture, and had stiffness when turning their heads. Overall, 38 volunteers were randomly split into a control group and an experimental group.

Both groups underwent a 6-week program of cervical exercises focusing on range of motion, strengthening, and posture correction 3 days a week, once daily with 10 repetitions. The experimental group additionally engaged in a PNF program using contract-relax and replication techniques three times a week. Outcomes including degree of pain, neck flexibility, muscle endurance, posture, and impairment were measured at the start and end of the study.

Result

In both groups, remarkable improvements in pain, muscle endurance, posture, and disability were noted. However, only the experimental group experienced significant increases in cervical range of motion, and they had greater overall improvements compared to the control group.

Conclusion

In patients with text neck syndrome, the application of PNF was associated with improvements in neck pain, disability, cervical range of motion, muscle endurance, and posture.