BEFORE AFTER STUDY TO DETERMINE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE ALIGN RIGHT CYLINDRICAL CERVICAL PILLOW IN REDUCING CHRONIC NECK PAIN SEVERITY/

Objective: To determine the effectiveness (at the 0.1 level of statist ical significance) of the Align-Right (roll-shaped) cervical pillow (A RCP) on neck pain severity and headache/neck pain medication use in ch ronic neck pain subjects. Design: The design was a ''before/after'' (i .e., a ''pre/post'' trial). Subjects: Twenty-eight subjects, 25-45 yr of age with cervical spine pain of biomechanical origin of > 2 on an 1 1-point ordinal pain scale. Outcome Measures: The primary outcome meas ure was severity of morning and evening neck pain. The secondary outco me measure was daily quantity of analgesics ingested. The data were an alyzed descriptively and inferentially for clinically and statisticall y significant pre/post intervention differences. Methods: Eligible sub jects who successfully finished a 2-wk baseline data-gathering period by mailing in two properly completed diaries each received a pillow an d four more diaries (to be filled in over the subsequent 4 wk). Three repeated-measures analyses of variance were performed using the Bonfer roni-corrected level of statistical significance of 0.03. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals (for paired-samples mean differences) wer e also calculated for those pre/post differences that seemed descripti vely clinically important. Results: The clinically and statistically s ignificant reductions in neck/shoulder pain severity in this sam-sie o f chronic neck pain subjects suggest that the ARCP is an effective the rapy for target populations with the same profile as this sample. Pati ent characteristics predicting suitability were not studied in this pr oject. Conclusion: The results suggest that the ARCP has clinically im portant beneficial effects on the neck pain severity of most chronic n eck-pain sufferers. Further randomized clinical trial research compari ng the ARCP with other commonly used cervical pillows is recommended.