Abstract
The cervical spine is one of the most frequently injured joints in a car accident. References for the range of motion (ROM) that should be expected in a person are needed to stage the injuries. The two main objectives of this paper are to clinically validate a measuring device for the cervical spine, and to assess if the use of different ROM reference values will render different results from the American Medical Association (AMA) ROM guidelines. The present study is divided into 2 phases, a validation phase with 55 subjects and a case-control phase with 80 subjects. A BTS (Bioengineering Technology and System) system and the EBI-5 (estudio biomecánico integral) system were used for the present investigation. The intraclass correlation agreement value between both measuring devices is considered very good with a Cronbach alpha up to 0.9 in every dimension. Correlations (r) between variables are very high, not showing any values lower than 0.887. All comparisons between using AMA ROM guidelines or normative values presented significant differences (p < 0.05). The EBI-5 system has exhibited good accuracy being paired to a photogrammetric system. The use of guidelines adjusted to age constitute an alternative to the use of the AMA cervical ROM guidelines. Professionals should use age-normalized guidelines as an alternative to the AMA guidelines.
Highlights
Traffic car accidents are responsible for an estimated 20 to 50 million injuries each year all over the world and while the survivability has increased, so has morbidity [1,2]
The results indicated that the pairing of the inertial motion units (IMUs) with the cervical range of motion (CROM) was excellent [27]
Our results show that an unadjusted age reference leads to poor results and induces one to think that healthy people might have a significant limitation of range of motion (ROM)
Summary
Traffic car accidents are responsible for an estimated 20 to 50 million injuries each year all over the world and while the survivability has increased, so has morbidity [1,2]. One of the most frequently diagnosed and studied injuries amongst traffic car injured is whiplash associated disorder (WAD) [3]. In western countries it is estimated that from 235 to 300 new whiplash cases arise for every 100,000 inhabitants per year [4]. This information can vary greatly between countries, with some like the USA with 328 cases every 100,000 inhabitants or others like Australia with 114 cases per. In Spain, between the year 2002 and 2004, 12% of patients injured in traffic accidents were diagnosed with WAD [8], and countries like Japan 37.7% from a sample of. In a study conducted in northern Sweden, 57% of patients diagnosed with
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