NEW GUIDE OUTLINES EFFECTIVE NECK PAIN TREATMENTS A new neck pain guide offers a concise summary on both helpful and unhelpful approaches to treating this common condition. The Neck Pain Evidence Summary is based on a series of research reviews published in the journal Spine. It covers the range of possible treatments for different severi-ties and types of neck pain, including whiplash. The Institute for Work and Health (IWH) created this sum-mary to share the evidence synthesis completed by the Bone and Joint Decade 2000-2010 Task Force on Neck Pain. IWH worked with the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, the Ontario Chiropractic Association and some members of the task force’s executive committee to prepare the summary. In February 2008, Spine published a special edition dedi-cated to the task force’s reviews on the prevention, prognosis, diagnosis and management of neck pain. After publication, a network of Canadian chiropractic leaders, co-ordinated by IWH, suggested distilling the evidence into a summary. “It’s exciting to see the chiropractic community take up the work of the task force this way,“ says Dr. Sheilah Hogg-Johnson, a task force member and IWH senior scientist. “The Neck Pain Evidence Summary provides a way for health-care professionals to review the evidence easily in their practice, and if they need further information, they can refer to the full research papers.“ The task force recommends treatments or further assess-ments, based on the severity of neck pain. They classified severity into four grades. In the evidence summary, a chart outlines the signs and symptoms, and further assessments for each grade. Then both helpful and unhelpful treatments are presented by grade and type of injury. Because there are several helpful treatments for some grades of neck pain, the patient’s preference should be con-sidered. For instance, any of the following treatments may benefit for the less serious Grade I or II neck pain, in cases with no traumatic accident: acupuncture, neck mobilization and manipulation, supervised exercise, low-level laser thera-py, and pain relievers. The guide will be useful to various health-care professionals who use these approaches, including chiropractors, medical doctors, physiotherapists and others. “We’re very pleased to be working with IWH and OCA to provide chiropractors with results of key research so they may continue to provide the best informed care to their patients,“ says Dr. Jean Moss, president of CMCC. “This Neck Pain Evi-dence Summary guide is another example of how intricate results of relevant research are distilled and transferred to practising chiropractors in a practical and accessible format.“ “We welcome the work of this international task force whose study affirms the safety and benefits of chiropractic care for people with neck pain, and we were very pleased to work with IWH and CMCC to ensure practitioners will have easy access to the most current and comprehensive research on neck pain,“ says Ontario Chiropractic Association Presi-dent Dr. David Brunarski. The Neck Pain Evidence Summary is available online at http://www.iwh.on.ca/neck-pain-evidence-summary. www.canadianchiropractor.ca CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | JULY/AUGUST 2010 • 33 news
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor July/August 2010: Page 33
