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Rehabilitation of women with neck pain

Rehabilitation of women with neck pain. Effects of individualized treatment based on prognostic indicators and tests of functioning

Knowledge is missing on how rehabilitation of neck pain should be designed to give best effect in each single case. Women working in the medical service often have chronic neck pain difficult to treat. The study will follow women working in the county council of Västerbotten who receive different types of neck treatment.

The overall aim is to get more effective rehabilitation of neck pain and better knowledge on how to decide which treatment that will be most effective in the individual case.

Neck pain is prevalent in working life and the knowledge on effective treatments is insufficient. Together with the occupational health care we want to evaluate rehabilitation efforts based on objective function tests, symptoms and clinical standardized tests. Outcome measures are working capacity, pain, function and general improvement. Through better knowledge on who needs what, there will be prospects of good results also for less extensive rehabilitation programs. We also want to evaluate the importance of physical and psychosocial factors at work for the long term treatment results.

The project will thereby yield important information about when measures need to be taken at the workplace as a part of the rehabilitation process, so that the neck problems don't recur because of deficits in the working environment. Also, blood samples will be taken in order to evaluate if new, powerful methods developed in biochemical research (metabolite profiles) can be used to differentiate people with neck pain from people with no pain and patients with generalized pain. That knowledge would be of great value for improving diagnostics and treatment decisions.

Responsible researcher

Martin Björklund

Co-workers

Umeå University, Dept. Community Medicine and Rehabilitation (Gunnevi Sundelin, Charlotte Häger-Ross)
University of Queensland, Australia, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences/ Physiotherapy (Gwendolen Jull)
Norrland's University Hospital, Occupational and Environmental Medicine (Jens Wahlström) and Rehabiliteringsmedicinskt centrum (Martin Fahlström)
Karolinska Institute, Institution of Clinical Neuroscience (Eva Kosek)

External financing:

Forskningsrådet för Arbetsliv och Socialvetenskap (FAS, dnr. 2009-1403), 2 250 000 kr; Afa Insurance (Dnr. 090288), 1 722 581 kr

Co-workers at CBF:

Mats Djupsjöbacka, Fredrik Hellström, Åsa Svedmark

Published by: Zara Lindahl Page responsible: Magnus Isaksson Updated: 2015-04-02
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