Normative data for the balance error scoring system for patients with chronic neck pain.

Everyone in the study had subclinical neck pain, a mild subset of neck pain in people who had not sought treatment; the authors say this limits applying the values to all patients with neck pain, including those with more severe or disabling symptoms. The sample of 310 is much smaller than earlier norm studies in healthy adults (589, 1236 and 1051 people) and in young athletes (6762). All participants came from one region of Thailand, and the authors note that balance norms do not transfer easily between populations with different sociocultural backgrounds and health characteristics. The comparison with healthy adults comes from other published studies, not from a healthy group measured in this study, so it is a between-study comparison rather than a controlled one. The study measured everyone once, so it shows how scores sit at a single point in time and cannot show whether balance worsens over time or whether neck pain causes the balance problems.

The authors declare no competing interests. The text supplied reports no funding source, and no sponsor role in designing or writing the study is described.

These values come from adults with mild to moderate subclinical neck pain who had not sought treatment, so they are not norms for healthy adults. Do not use them to judge whether someone without neck pain has a balance problem, and do not read the higher scores as proof that neck pain causes poor balance, because the comparison with healthy adults comes from other published studies rather than a healthy group measured here.