earticle

영어

The purpose of this study was to confirm how the thoracic spine correction applied to patients with cervical radiculopathy affects pain and dysfunction compared to the sham thoracic spine manipulation. The subjects of this study were 30 patients diagnosed with cervical neuropathy who understood and agreed to the purpose of this study. The subjects were randomly assigned to thoracic spine manipulation group and sham thoracic spine manipulation 15 patients. In order to confirm the degree of improvement in pain was performed to confirm the numeric pain rating scale, cervical active range of motion, Korean version of Neck Disability Index, and ultrasonography measurement was performed to confirm mechanical changes in the median nerve. After baseline measurement, thoracic spine manipulation and sham thoracic spine manipulation were applied to each group, and general physical therapy(electrotherapy and heat therapy) was applied to the two groups for 30 minutes. After that, re-evaluation was conducted in the same manner as above to find out the changes. Statistical analysis used SPSS version 22 for Windows. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the general characteristics of each group. ANOVA was used to compare the results of pain, range of motion, neck disability index, and median nerve changes before, after, and follow-up(p<.05). As a result of the study, pain was significantly decreased in the follow-up evaluation compared to before and after intervention, and cervical active range of motion was significantly increased in both before and after intervention and follow- up evaluation. The neck disability index significantly improved in the follow-up evaluation before, after intervention. In conclusion, the application of thoracic spine manipulation to subjects with cervical spine-related pain showed an effect of improving the pain and range of motion. In particular, it shows an immediate effect on improving the score of the neck disability index, so it is necessary to actively use it. In future studies, it is necessary to study the effect of long-term intervention by securing more subjects and expanding the intervention period.