Ensayo clínico aleatorizado sobre el beneficio clínico de la tracción mecánica cervical intermitente en la cervicalgia crónica degenerativa

Identifier:  TDX:2560

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2560

Authors:  Llopart Alcalde, Nuria

Abstract:
Roughly 95% of population have neck pain after 65 years old. The annual incidence of neck pain is estimated at 12.3% on adult general population, and more than a third of patients will develop chronical pain. The intermittent cervical traction is a regular treatment for the neck pain, expanding intervertebral spaces, increasing the joint movement and strengthening the muscles and tendons around the vertebra. There aren’t enough evidences of his benefit to improve the pain in literature. Our purpose is to strengthen this evidence to assist in clinical decisions of this treatment. We did a prospective controlled and blinded study. The study population is composed by 72 individuals, men and women aged between 45-75 years old, with degenerative chronic neck pain for more than 6 month evolution. They are divided randomly into two groups of 36 patients, the treatment group was treated with cervical effective traction and the control group was treated with cervical ineffective traction. Both groups did 15 rehabilitation sessions and were treated with deep thermotherapy, cervical exercises and intermittent cervical traction. Neither the evaluator nor the patient knew if the applied treatment was effective or not. Only the therapist knew the type of traction that should apply. There are three evaluations, before treatment, immediately after treatment and 6 months after treatment. We were evaluating the pain with visual analogue scale. The initial hypothesis was to achieve a decrease of 3 points or more over 10 on the VAS in pain on 70% of patients in the treatment group compared to 30% of control patients.