Pilates Exercises on Pain, Functional Disability and ROM Among Children With Text Neck Syndrome

Overview

Text Neck' is a term used to describe a posture that is caused by leaning forward for long period of time such as reading or texting on smartphone. Neck pain, discomfort, reduced function and limited range of motion are the signs of text neck. Forward head posture is the most common cervical issue in the sagittal plane. Neck pain interferes with daily life activities. Pilates exercise program is the most appropriate exercise program for the prevention of forward head posture. For improvement with neck pain and activity limitation 24 Children with age 12-17 year will be randomly assign in 2 groups. Group A will receive conventional physical therapy program for the affected neck like stretching exercises, active range of motion exercise, and neck isometrics for 6 weeks (3 sessions per week). The treatment duration will be of 50 min. On the other hand Group B will receive Pilate's exercises like cat stretch, swan dive/roll up along with conventional therapy for 6 weeks(3 sessions per week). In each session there will be 25 minutes of conventional therapy and 25 minutes of Pilate's exercises program. Then evaluate both groups on follow up. All data will be collected from Gov. High School Niaz Baig by using Visual Analogue Scale, Functional Disability Index questionnaire and Goniometer. The reliability and validity of tools are mentioned. The duration of study will be 6 months. Data will be analyzed with the help of SPSS 25.

Text Neck' is a term used to describe a posture that is caused by leaning forward for long period of time such as reading or texting on smartphone. Neck pain, discomfort, reduced function and limited range of motion are the signs of text neck. Forward head posture is the most common cervical issue in the sagittal plane. Neck pain interferes with daily life activities. Pilates exercise program is the most appropriate exercise program for the prevention of forward head posture. It focuses on postural alignment, which results in increasing craniovertebral angle and decreasing pain. Improving text neck is very important because it can enhance an individual's ability to perform everyday activities. A randomized controlled trial will be conducted through convenient sampling. Data will be collected from Allied school and The Trust School, Lahore. Sample size of 24 subjects, with age group between 12 to 17 years will be taken. Data will collected from participants that use smart phone for more than 4hr/day. Participants with cervical fracture, trauma and scoliosis will be excluded. Outcome measure will be taken using Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for pain, Functional Disability Inventory (FDI) for function and Universal Goniometer (UG) for range of motion. An informed consent will be taken. Subjects will be randomly allocated into two groups: experimental group will receive Pilates exercise program like cat/chest stretch, swan dive/spine twist in addition to designed conventional therapy, while the control group will receive designed conventional therapy for the affected neck like stretching exercises, neck isometrics and active range of motion exercises. The treatment duration will be of 6 weeks and 50min/day. Data will be analyzed on SPSS version 25; the normality of the data will be checked and tests will be applied according to the normality of the data either it will be a parametric or non-parametric test based on the normality.