Effects of Chronic Mechanical Neck Pain on Motor Control of Cervical Muscles: A Systematic Review

Background and Changes in neuromuscular control of the neck muscles, is one of the problems associated with neck pain. The purpose of the present study was to review the previously published studies concerning the effect of chronic neck pain on neuromuscular control of cervical region.
A literature search was performed for the studies published in 1990-2014 in some databases including ProQuest, Google scholar, Medlib, PubMed, Science direct, Scopus, and EMBASE. Neck pain, motor control, electromyography, and cervical muscles were the search keywords. Fifteen articles that reviewed cervical muscles’ activities in patients with chronic mechanical neck pain by surface electromyography were included. All studies had a case-control design. There were some variations among the studies in terms of methodology, location and type of the muscle, sample size, and investigation of muscles during different tasks. The studies were rated as ‘A’ to ‘E’ based on Hailey’s study design and performance.
According to some studies the activity of the deep cervical muscles reduced in patients compared to that of the controls. Also, a dramatic increased compensatory activity of the superficial muscles was seen compared to healthy controls.
The results showed changes in motor control strategies of the cervical region, electrical activity of the different muscle layers and the structural characteristics of these muscles in presence of neck pain.