The assessment of cervical sensory motor control: A systematic review focusing on measuring methods and their clinimetric characteristics

BackgroundCervical sensorimotor control (CSMC) becomes increasingly important in the assessment and treatment of patients with neck pain. This review aims to compare commonly used CSMC measuring methods in terms of required tasks, measuring device and clinimetric properties.Search methodsA systematic review of two databases, followed by methodological quality assessment (CBO guidelines).ResultsThe methodological quality of 34 included articles was generally good (five to seven out of eight), the inter-rater agreement was excellent (κw = 0.966, p < 0.01). Following tasks were found: head repositioning accuracy to the neutral head position (HRA-to-NHP) and to a target position (HRA-to-target), a virtual reality test, a continuous linear movement technique (CLMT) and an object following non-linear movement technique (NLMT) (The Fly™). Test-retest reliability was fair to excellent (ICC 0.35-0.87) for the HRA-to-NHP, very bad to excellent (ICC 0.01-0.90) for the HRA-to-target, fair to good (ICC 0.25-0.77) for the virtual reality test and moderate to excellent (ICC: 0.60-0.86) for The Fly™. The reliability of the CLMT was not documented. The HRA-to-NHP, The Fly™ and the CLMT can discriminate between patients with neck complaints and controls (discriminant validity). Currently, only The Fly™ can discriminate between different patient populations (post-traumatic and non-traumatic neck pain). The sensitivity, specificity and responsiveness of the methods have to be assessed in future research.ConclusionsThe dynamic method The Fly™ appears to be more reliable than the HRA-to-NHP and is able to discriminate between different patient populations. The diagnostic potential is to be confirmed in future research.

► Cervical sensorimotor control (CSMC) can be tested by five different measuring techniques. ► In general the distinction between the identified techniques can be made into repositioning tasks and trajectory registrations. ► The head repositioning accuracy test to the neutral head position (HRA-to-NHP) and The Fly™ test are sufficiently reliable to test CSMC.