Proprioception and neck/shoulder pain

• Chronic neck/shoulder pain constitutes an extensive health problem. The point prevalence has been estimated to be as high as 18% in the general population (Guez et al., 2003). The symptoms usually involve pain and stiffness in the neck/shoulder area as well as impaired neck mobility. A history of neck or head trauma is rather common. Thus, in the population studied by Guez et al. (2003), more than one fourth of the cases had a history of such trauma. Nevertheless, due to a limited knowledge on the underlying pathomechanisms, the source of the symptoms can only rarely be established. This obviously poses a severe problem for efficient treatment and rehabilitation of this patient group. In order to improve treatment and rehabilitation it is thus important to develop sensitive and specific methods for characterization of patients with chronic neck/shoulder pain. This should obviously entail many different aspects of the patient characteristics. One such aspect that has received increasing attention is sensorimotor functions, for example muscle coordination and proprioception. The growing interest in this area is based on an increasing number of studies reporting atypical, or impaired, sensorimotor functioning in subjects with chronic neck/shoulder pain, along with the fact that several models on the pathophysiology behind musculoskeletal disorders involves various aspects of sensorimotor functioning. This chapter will deal with one of these sensorimotor functions: proprioception. First, a background to the topic and a review on the research on proprioception in relation to chronic neck/shoulder pain is given, along with a discussion on methodology. Lastly, implications for future research as well as clinical implications are discussed.

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