• Newell D
• Bale A

• Cervical Vertebrae / injuries
• Chronic Disease
• Neck Pain / rehabilitation
• Pain / rehabilitation

Purpose: To explore whether chronicity affects patient response to chiropractic treatment of neck pain, and how this may impact chiropractic patient management.

Method: Pilot cohort study, conducted in a clinic setting, to evaluate patient responses to chiropractic for neck pain. The 21 people who completed the study were divided into two groups depending on the duration of their neck pain (less than 7 weeks and 7 weeks or longer). They were assessed using the Bournemouth Questionnaire for neck pain, which measures outcomes of direct relevance to the individual, such as pain, disability, and perceptions of improvements in quality of life, levels of anxiety and depression.

Conclusion: The results demonstrate a positive effect for chiropractic on symptoms of neck pain. The more chronic the presentation, the more treatments were required to achieve asymptomatic status. More acute presentations were perceived as more severe, giving, on average, a higher pre-intervention score. However, the post-intervention scores were, on average, lower. Although the lack of a control group and small sample size limit the generalisations that can be drawn from the results, the overall conclusions may provide important lines of enquiry for future possible study and inform aspects of chiropractic management.

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