Efficacy of ultrasound therapy with neck retraction exercises vs. ultrasound therapy with deep cervical flexor training for excessive screen time users: a pilot randomized controlled study.

This was a pilot study with 36 participants, 12 in each group, so it cannot show how large the benefit is. All participants were aged 18 to 25 years and had non-specific neck pain, so results may not apply to older adults or people with cervical fracture, radiculopathy, headaches, malignancy, osteoporosis, disc prolapse, degenerative changes or other posture-related conditions. Follow-up was only two weeks after four weeks of training, so longer-term effects are unknown. All groups received postural advice, and both active groups received ultrasound plus an exercise, so the separate contribution of ultrasound, the retraction exercise or the deep cervical flexor training cannot be separated. The paper does not describe blinding of participants or assessors, or allocation concealment, and random assignment was done by a researcher. The four-week pairwise CCFT result is reported as significant (p=0.039), but the methods state a Bonferroni adjusted alpha of 0.016 for between-group comparisons. The discussion says retraction was more effective than deep cervical flexor training, but the results do not report a direct pairwise comparison between the two active groups.

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude that neck retraction exercises are proven better than deep cervical flexor training. The results report statistically significant follow-up differences between each active group and the postural-advice control group, not a direct significant comparison between the two active groups.