Efficacy of telerehabilitation in patients with nonspecific neck pain: A meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: At a rate of more than 30% annually, neck pain is a very prevalent musculoskeletal ailment that is second only to low back pain as the most common cause of disability. Most occurrences of neck pain are nonspecific. Telerehabilitation is regarded as a potentially effective healthcare approach in this setting. This review aims to evaluate how a telerehabilitation-based intervention affected individuals with nonspecific neck pain (NNP) in terms of pain and disability.

METHODS: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, MEDLINE, Cochrane library, ClinicalTrials.gov, CNKI, and WanFang were consulted from inception to September 2023, with the inclusion of randomized controlled trials only. The experimental data were meta-analyzed using RevMan 5.3.

RESULTS: The meta-analysis contained eight studies; there was no significant difference in pain improvement in patients with NNP by telerehabilitation compared to conventional care (SMD = -0.10, 95% CI: -0.48 to 0.28), but there was a significant effect on disability improvement (SMD = -0.41, 95% CI: -0.78 to -0.03). Telerehabilitation demonstrated more significant improvements in pain (SMD = -1.16, 95% CI: -1.99 to -0.32) and disability (MD = -3.78, 95% CI: -5.29 to -2.27) compared to minimal or no intervention.

DISCUSSION: This study emphasizes the potential benefits of employing telerehabilitation in patients with NNP, especially in reducing pain intensity and improving disability. But additional study is required to fully grasp the potential of telerehabilitation in this field.