Comparative Study of Postural Garment Versus Exercises for Patients With Nonspecific Cervical Pain: Protocol for a Randomized Crossover Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is a high prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders among health care professionals. Posture is an essential point to be addressed for health care professionals with musculoskeletal disorders. Cervical pain can result from several conditions. Treatment should include posture modification and home exercise. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to compare a new postural garment (Posture Plus Force; Medi, Bayreuth, Germany) with exercises for women with nonspecific cervical pain. The investigators focus on nurses and allied health professionals due to the importance of posture in work-related musculoskeletal disorders. METHODS: This randomized crossover clinical trial has a 3-month treatment sequence and a 3-month washout period. Participants will include nurses and allied health professionals 21 to 55 years of age with cervical pain. Participants are allocated at random to two intervention groups: a postural garment (Posture Plus Force) to be worn for 2 to 4 hours per day for 90 days (P+ group) and five physiotherapy sessions (20 minutes each) to learn stretching and strengthening exercises with instructions to continue at home on a daily basis for 90 days (Ex group). The participants in each group will crossover interventions after a 3-month washout period. The primary outcomes are postural control and pain intensity. A static posturography will be performed with a scan (SpinalMouse; Idiag AG, Fehraltorf, Switzerland). The visual analogue scale is a psychometric measuring instrument designed to document cervical pain severity in individual participants. The secondary outcomes are cervical pain-related disability, catastrophizing, the global perceived effect of treatment, and the evaluation of garment comfort. Physical activity is assessed with the International Physical Activity Questionnaire. Assessment of primary and secondary outcomes is performed at T0 (pre-intervention), T1 (immediately after garment fitting for P+ group), T30, T60, and T90. The same measurements are recorded after the washout period and during the second intervention following the same sequence. All patients are provided with a logbook for compliance recording, over the counter drug use, pain evaluation, and sick leave. Statistical analysis is conducted following intention-to-treat principles and the treatment effects calculated using linear mixed models. RESULTS: The study design has been approved by the Ethics Commission of Hospital N Sra de Meritxell, Andorra in March 2017. A total of 32 participants are already enrolled in the study. An extension of the study is planned in a Spanish university hospital to achieve a larger sample. Study results are expected to be published during 2020. CONCLUSIONS: The Postural garment is expected to improve cervical pain by enhancing posture. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03560492; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03560492. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/14807.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.022 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.016 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.059 | 0.009 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".