Posture and cervicobrachial pain syndromes.

Abstract

The accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of disabilities manifest by cervicobrachial pain and paresthesias is difficult. The difficulty has been increased by the myriad of reports dealing with cervicobrachial syndromes, because of a tendency to regard each of them as a specific clinical entity. Lack of notable success with specific treatment as in the scalenus anticus syndrome has tended to discredit the syndrome without otherwise accounting for the patient's disability. To fill this void the criteria for a diagnosis of a protruded cervical intervertebral disk are at times stretched beyond their just limits or a functional etiology is invoked to explain such symptoms. To the confusion of examiners, specificity of name in cervicobrachial syndromes is not matched by a specificity of either symptoms or signs. Many of the cervicobrachial syndromes regularly listed in diagnostic classifications are not clinical entities but rather are isolated aspects of a single clinical problem. The