Adding Temporomandibular joint treatments to routine physiotherapy for patients with non-specific chronic neck pain: A randomized clinical study.
INTRODUCTION
Neck Pain can be related to the disorders of other adjacent areas such as the Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ). This study aimed to investigate whether there is value in adding TMJ treatments to routine physiotherapy in patients with non-specific chronic neck pain compared with a control group.


METHODS
A randomized, single-blind, clinical study desined including two groups of patients. Group A (20 people) received routine physiotherapy for neck pain and group B (20 people) received TMJ manual therapy plus exercise therapy in addition to routine physiotherapy for neck pain. The Treatment program included six sessions for two days a week over a period of 21 days. Assessments were performed during the first session, in the last session and one month after treatment as a follow-up. Outcome measures included neck range of motion (ROM), neck disability index (NDI) and visual analogue scale (VAS). Before starting the study, the reliability of methods for measuring neck ROM was evaluated.


RESULTS
Participants were 21 women and 19 men. Initially, a pilot study was carried out on the 40 volunteers to assess the reliability of the measurement methods, and the results were acceptable. With both the control group and the intervention group, the indexes showed significant improvement (p < 0.001), although the intervention group showed more improvement (p < 0.001).


CONCLUSION
This result means adding treatments of TMJ to routine neck physiotherapy can magnify the effect of the intervention, a significant change still in evidence at follow up. Moreover, given the clinically important differences, our results for VAS and NDI were acceptable.
['Ghodrati|Maryam|M|', 'Mosallanezhad|Zahra|Z|', 'Shati|Mohsen|M|', 'Noroozi|Mehdi|M|', 'Moghadam|Afsun Nodehi|AN|', 'Rostami|Mohamad|M|', 'Nourbakhsh|Mohammad Reza|MR|']
D059350:Chronic Pain D004185:Disability Evaluation D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D019547:Neck Pain D026741:Physical Therapy Modalities D010865:Pilot Projects D016059:Range of Motion, Articular D015203:Reproducibility of Results D016037:Single-Blind Method D013704:Temporomandibular Joint D016896:Treatment Outcome
Temporomandibular joint Physiotherapy Manual therapy Exercise therapy Nonspecific chronic neck pain