Correlation between head posture, pain and disability index neck in women with complaints of neck pain

Abstract

Neck pain is the most common symptom of cervical dysfunctions often being related to the maintenance of postures. Postural changes of the head are often associated with the occurrence of neck pain with an anterior approach was the most frequent. The purpose was to investigate the correlation between head posture, pain intensity and neck disability index. The study group (SG) was composed of women, aged between 20 and 50 years who complained of neck pain for more than three months, and the control group (CG) for asymptomatic women. Pain intensity was assessed by visual analogue scale (VAS), disability by neck disability index (NDI) and the head posture by the craniovertebral angle (CV). Normality of the data was verified by the Lilliefors test and the comparison between groups by the Student's t-test for independent samples, and the association between variables by Spearman correlation test. Significance level was 5%. The SG had lower average CV for the angle (p=0.02). The CV angle was negatively correlated with the VAS (r=-0.48) and NDI (r=-0.15) suggesting that the smaller the angle, the greater the intensity of neck pain and disability. The NDI and VAS showed a positive correlation (r=0.59). The angle CV in subjects with neck pain was significantly lower than in healthy individuals association with the neck disability index and pain.