Background and Aim: Neck pain is one of the most prevalent disorders in the world and became a major public health problem. It is a common condition affecting as much as two-thirds or more of the general population at one point of time during their life. Cervical collars have been approved to be effective on neck pain and disability as a conservative treatment. Actually most of patients refused to use them because of their appearance and raise temperature by wearing them. So we introduced a new design of cervical collar called Open-design collar, it seems that could be accepted better by patients because of its different appearance. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of Open-design collar on user’s acceptance and cervical range of motion in asymptomatic adults.
Materials and Methods: Seventy-two healthy subjects (36 women and 36 men) aged 18 to 29 years oldwere recruited for this study. Neck movements were measured using JTECH Medical Dual Digital Inclinometer . Active flexion, extension, right and left lateral flexion, and right and left rotation were assessed in each subject 3 times with and without Open-design collar. To assessthe acceptance of wearing Open-design collar, each subject was asked to fill an acceptance questionnaire of five criteria about the Open-design collar.
Results: Open-design collar significantly reduced cervical motions. It reduced flexion and extension on average by 78.24 ± 8.03%, 79.91 ± 8.02%, and right lateral flexion and left lateral flexion by 56.70 ± 13.91%, 54.34 ± 13.39% and right axial rotation and left axial rotation on average by 82.22 ± 5.48 and 82.60 ± 6.77.
Conclusion: Based on the data of the 72 subjects presented in this study, the Open-design collar adequately immobilized the cervical spine as a semi-rigid collar while the subjects accepted it by a good score.
Keywords: Neck orthoses, Collar, Range of motion, Acceptance