Table 6.

Overview of effectiveness of manual therapy treatments

Intervention	Effectiveness	Level of evidence
Unimodal
Cervical manipulation as unimodal therapy	More effective at short term follow up (<1 week) on pain than NSAIDs	Low level evidence from 1 study of high methodological quality (Howe, [20]).
Thoracic manipulation as unimodal therapy	Unknown	No RCTs found
Cervical mobilisation as unimodal therapy	More effective at immediate follow up than a placebo or a wait&see policy on pain and range of motion.	Very low level evidence from 1 study of low methodological quality (Brodin, [38]).
Thoracic mobilisations as unimodal therapy	Unknown	No RCTs found
Cervical mobilisation with a neurodynamical intent as unimodal intervention	Immediate increase in elbow extension during an ULNT and a decrease in the area of symptom distribution, and pain intensity.	Low level evidence from 1 study of high methodological quality (Coppieters, [39]).
Multimodal
Combined joint mobilisation and specific (motor control) exercises	More effective at short term follow up (<4 weeks) than either manual therapy or exercise alone or wait & see on pain and activity limitations	Low level evidence from 2 studies, 1 of high (Langevin, [41]) and 1 of low (Ragonese, [18]) methodological quality.
Multimodal intervention with neurodynamic intent	More effective at short term follow up (<4 weeks) than wait & see policy on pain and global perceived effect	Low level evidence from 1 study with of high methodological quality (Nee, [42])
Multimodal intervention with combined (neurodynamic, joint, muscle) intent	More effective at short term (3 - 8 weeks) follow up on pain	Low level evidence from 2 studies of low methodological quality (Ragonese, [18]; Allison, [30])
Cervical traction combined with manual therapy and exercises	At the short term follow up (<4 weeks) no significant difference between traction or placebo traction	Low level evidence from 1 study of high methodological quality (Young, [19])