Intra- and inter-rater reliability of neutral head position and target head position tests in patients with and without neck pain.
Khalid Alahmari, Ravi Shankar Reddy, Paul Silvian and 3 others
PMID 28558952WHAT IT FOUND
Inexpensive inclinometer tests of neck position sense gave consistent readings when repeated by the same therapist or used by another therapist.
People with neck pain made larger repositioning errors than healthy people in most directions.
Key findings
01The inclinometer-based neutral head position and target head position tests showed good intra-rater agreement, with ICC values between 0.74 and 0.78 for neutral head position and between 0.64 and 0.83 for target head position.
02The tests also showed good inter-rater agreement, with neutral head position ICC values between 0.74 and 0.79 and target head position ICC values of at least 0.66.
03Patients with neck pain showed significantly larger repositioning errors than healthy subjects (p < 0.001) in all movement directions except target head position side bending.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was done in a single physical therapy department, so the results may not transfer to other settings. Both examiners were experienced physical therapists, so less experienced clinicians may get different agreement values. One neck-pain participant dropped out after the first session, and 35 neck-pain participants completed both sessions. The neck-pain group was significantly older than the healthy group, so age may be mixed up with the group difference. Only absolute repositioning error was recorded, so the study did not analyse whether people consistently overshot or undershot the target. The neutral head position test was performed only from extension, so the results may not apply to other directions for that test. The measurement results were studied only in non-specific neck pain, so other neck conditions may behave differently. The smallest detectable change values reported in the text do not match the values shown in the table.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that these inclinometer tests diagnose neck pain. The study showed consistent measurement and larger errors in patients with non-specific neck pain, but it did not test diagnostic accuracy.