Effects of rehabilitative exercise on patients with cervical spondylosis in communities

Limin SUN; Yi WU; Yongshan HU

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Cervical spondylosis is a common disease in middleaged and elderly people. There are many methods of rehabilitative treatment such as traction, massage, medical gymnastics, acupuncture and local blocking, etc.

OBJECTIVE:

To observe the effects of rehabilitative exercise on patients with cervical spondylosis by way of quantitative generalized boxing exercise combined with local cervical medical exercise.

DESIGN:

Self-control study on patients with cervical spondylosis in the community for 3 months

SETTING:

Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University

PARTICIPANTS:

The indoor questionnaire investigation about chronic diseases in community was carried out on 1 457 inhabitants with the age from 35 to 74 in a community of South Nanjing district, Shanghai in order to check out the patients with cervical spondylosis who had been diagnosed confirmatively by hospital and exclude the patients with the disease of spinal cord type. There were total 114 patients volunteering to participate in the 3-month rehabilitative treatment with an informed content, including of 12 with cervical type of the disease, 39 with nerve root type, 23 with vertebroarterial type, 5 with sympathetic nerve type, 35 with mixed type and none with spinal cord type.

METHODS:

3-month rehabilitative exercise was carried out for the 114 patients with cervical spondylosis.① One or several kinds of generalized boxing exercise such as shadow boxing, eighteen-gesture training practice and joint exercise were chosen by the patients according to their own in terest and physical energy. It was required that patient exercise was done for 3 months with one time a day, and each time for no less than 30 minutes, with the intensity after each exercise arriving to the target heart rate level of 170 subtracting their age. ② Aiming to exercise the cervicalshoulder part and to relax its related functions, the local cervical medical exercise has 12 procedures including turning left and right, moving neck around, shrinking head and relaxing shoulders, stretching neck and extending back, turning head and watching the moon, waving arms, putting up arms, lifting chest and squaring elbows, and trying hard to stretch neck.It was required that each procedure be repeated 5 to 10 times at the beginning and later more times increasing gradually, and the whole set of exercise be practiced for 3 months with lor 2 times each day and each time lasted at least 10 minutes.③No other treatment was performed by the patients except for the above exercise intervention. The effects were evaluated after 3 months.MAIN OUTCOME

MEASURES:

①The evaluated results of the curative effect in all patients with 3-month rehabilitative exercise.② Relationship between types of cervical spondylosis and curative effect ③ Relationship between course of disease and curative effect

RESULTS:

According to the intention-to-treat analysis, all the 114 patients persisting in the 3-month exercise intervention entered the result analysis. The curative effect evaluation among the 114 patients, 44 were with the general curative effect, 40 with marked improvement, 25 with improvement, 5 with inefficacy. The percentage of the general curative and marked improved is 73.7%, and that of total improvement is 95.6% The clinical manifestations of all patients with cervical spondylosis including cervicoscapulargia, radioactive numb and pain in unilateral or bilateral upper arms, dizziness, tinnitus, headache, etc.were distinctively improved ② Relationship between the types of cervical spondylosis and curative effect after 3-month treatment of rehabilitative exercise, the percentage of the general curative effect and marked improvement in patients with cervical type and nerve root type was higher than that in patients with verteboarterial type, sympathetic nerve type and mixed type (91.7%,97.4%, 47.8% ,20.0% ,65.7% respectively and p value below 0.01). ③ Relationship between the course of cervical spondylosis and curative effects the percentage of the general curative effect and marked improvement in patients with the course of less than one year is 90.9% and that in patients with the course of 1 to 5 years is 88.6%, which were all higher than that in patients with a course of 5 more years (p value below 0.01).

CONCLUSION:

Quantitative generalized boxing exercise combined with local cervical medical exercise is helpful to improve the radiculopathy symptoms, but only combined with other treatments could patients with vertebroarterial type receive the best curative effect. In addition, there is a certain relation between the course of disease and curative effect, and patients with cervical spondylosis should be treated with rehabilitative exercise as early as possible, which suggestes that it is worthy of popularization that patients with cervical spondylosis are organized to practice quantitative boxing exercise combined with cervical medical exercise in the community.