Evaluating the efficacy of Telerehabilitation in comparison to conventional physiotherapy on pain and quality of life of patients with mechanical neck pain

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of remote rehabilitation on pain and quality of life in patients with mechanical neck pain and compare it with conventional physiotherapy.

Patients with randomization by Block Randomization method in one of the two groups are treated with physiotherapy in the clinic or physiotherapy through APP. A questionnaire including demographic information, VAS, NDI, SF-12 criteria will be completed by patients and the range of active neck movement will be measured by a goniometer. Patients are evaluated according to the mentioned criteria before the intervention, one month and three months after the start of treatment.

This interventional study is performed as a clinical trial in patients with mechanical neck pain who are referred to Imam Reza Hospital in Tehran.

Inclusion criteria include patients in the age range of 25 to 60 years who have had pain for more than 6 weeks and have been diagnosed with mechanical neck pain, their VAS level is between 3 and 8 and have a phone with Android operating system. Been. Patients who have undergone treatment or other surgery within three months or whose neck pain is due to a known trauma or is a sign of radiculopathy, paresthesia, focal neurological symptoms or danger signs are excluded from the study.

neck muscle stretching exercises and strengthening exercises with emphasis on core stabilizer muscles and endurance exercises were considered. The APP group receives the exercises in the form of a video through the software, The physiotherapy group in the clinic also receives oral and written exercises after a routine cervical physiotherapy course.

VAS score, NDI, SF-12

For random allocating of two groups with the same size of 25 participants (50 patients in total) we used block randomization with different block sizes. The sizes of blocks would be a multiple of 2 and a divisor of 40 (2,4,8). At first, the block sizes were selected randomly. Then, for each block, different permutations for equal group size were determined. Finally, one of the permutations was selected randomly. Random numbers were generated in an independent statistical office using Random allocation software.