The assessment of the sensorimotor control of the cervical spine : systematic review focusing on the reliability and validity test methods

Details

Supervisors

Hage, Renaud ; Pitance, Laurent

Faculty

Faculté des sciences de la motricité

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de la motricité, orientation générale

Abstract

Background: It is well known today that sensorimotor abilities are often reduced in patients suffering from neck pain and for most of them this disability is not going back to normal once the patient is pain free. It could play a role in the development of chronic neck pain. It’s important to assess cervical sensorimotor control (cSMC) in order to put in place the best treatment. Objective: The main objective is to present all the different available tests assessing the cSMC and to discuss them about their reliability and validity to define witch one is the best to use. Search methods: A systematic review was performed through Embase, Pubmed, Sciencedirect, Scopus and PEDro using different keywords, different strategies depending on the database and PRISMA guidelines. Results: 11 studies were included after screening procedure. The reliability of the studies varied between no or fair agreement to excellent or perfect agreement. We also found a large variability between the different studies about validity, with sometimes opposites results. Conclusion: the majority of the tests showed variable results in terms of validity and/or reliability but the most promising test for clinical practice is the HRA-to-NHP using the CROM or Laser Pointer. Further studies are necessary to generalize the results and to make it applicable to the clinical practice. Also, this systematic review shows the critical need of developing a consensus to standardize cSMC assessments.