Neck pain

I found Ian Tsang's recent article on pain in the neck to be quite useful and in fact used parts of it in a lecture I gave.¹ However, I feel that 2 points need to be clarified.

Tsang mentions the lack of a history of a specific injury as one of the ways to discriminate group 1 pain (cervical problems arising from neck joints and associated ligaments and muscles) from group 2 pain (cervical problems involving the cervical nerve roots or the spinal cord). This is not consistent with the fact that neck pain resulting from whiplash primarily involves the soft tissues of the neck.

Second, he states that a burning sensation is characteristic of group 2 pain. This is more typical of pain arising from muscles, such as myofascial pain syndromes, than of radicular pain.²

Signature

Sansin Tuzun
Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Cerrahpasa School of Medicine Istanbul University Istanbul, Turkey