Neck pain – what to do?
Most of us experience neck pain at some time in our lives. It is in fact, one of the top 5 chronic pain conditions worldwide (Cohen et al, 2017). It can be the result of trauma, for example, a whiplash injury following a car accident or due to our everyday function such as work or exercise. Usually our neck pain will settle with some exercise, over-the-counter medications, the odd hotpack and we get on with our lives. But, occasionally our neck pain does not settle, niggles on and becomes a literal pain in the neck to our function. What do do? Who to see?
As musculoskeletal physiotherapists, we have the education and experience to assess and treat your neck pain and to help you treat and manage it into the future. It is important that the mechanism of injury and contributing factors to your pain are established early and addressed so your neck pain resolves and doesn’t flare up episodically.
Treatments such as massage, dry needling, mobilization can help to settle your pain and exercise therapy (Cox et al, 2019) and ergonomic assessment and management can give you long-term relief. Ongoing exercise is important and has the strongest evidence in the literature for managing neck pain (Cohen et al, 2017).
References:
Cohen, SP, Hooten, WM, 2017. Advances in the diagnosis and management of neck pain. BMJ
Cox, LG, Kidgell, DJ, Iles, RA, 2019. Neck-specific strengthening exercises and cognitive therapy for chronic neck pain: a systematic review. Physical Therapy Reviews 24 (6), 335-345.
