Effect of 12-Week Neck, Core, and Combined Stabilization Exercises on the Pain and Disability of Elderly Patients With Chronic Non-specific Neck Pain: A Clinical Trial

Objectives To investigate the effect of 12 weeks of neck stabilization, core stabilization, and combined stabilization exercises on pain and disability among elderly people in Tehran City, Iran. Methods & Materials This study was a 12 weeks open-label clinical trial. A total of 18 elderly patients with chronic neck pain were randomly assigned into three groups: neck stabilization training (6 people), core stabilization training (6 people), and combined stabilization training (6 people). The severity of neck pain and disability before the beginning of the training, 8 weeks after training and one week after the completion of the exercises were measured using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), Neck Disability Index (NDI) and Neck Pain and Disability Scale (NPDI). To investigate the effect of time, repeated measure analysis of variance was used to analyze the data in SPSS version 21. Results The Mean+/-SD scores of pain before and after neck stabilization treatment were respectively 6.08+/-0.58, 4.83+/-0.52 for VAS and 49.17+/-2.86 and 39.17+/-2.79 for NDI; and 56.4+/-2.11 and 50.0+/-1.64 for NPDI; those differences between pairs were significant. The Mean+/-SD scores of pain before and after core stabilization treatment were respectively, 6.00+/-0.55, 4.92+/-0.20 for VAS; 49.67+/-1.86 and 39.17 +/-1.94 for NDI; and 56.01+/-2.44, and 48.92+/-1.16 for NPDI; those differences between pairs were significant. Also, the Mean+/-SD scores of pain before and after combined stabilization treatment were respectively, 6.00+/-0.45, 4.00+/-0.32 for VAS; 49.83+/-2.23 and 37.17+/-2.86 for NDI; and 55.25+/-0.28 and 47.51+/-1.44 for NPDI; those differences between pairs were significant (P< 0.05). Among the underlying variables, gender was the only significant factor in pain relief in the elderly (F=6.21, P=0.02), while other variables were not significant (P>0.05). Conclusion The findings of this study showed that 12 sessions of neck, core, and combined stabilization training in the neck region could improve the tolerance and pain of the elderly with nonspecific chronic neck pain.