The effectiveness of home exercise programme in music students with neck-shoulder pain

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of home-based exercise programme on pain and disability level in music students with neck ? shoulder pain. Materials and Methods: Totaly 49 subjects (37 women, 12 men, mean age 17.2±1.7 years) who are continuing their education on piano and string instruments at Dokuz Eylül University Conservatoire and had neck-shoulder pain were included in this study. Standardised exercise programme including posture, stretching and strenghting exercise aimed at the muscle structures on neck-shoulder region was given to subjects to do it for 8 weeks. The number of doing exercise was controlled by a diary which was given to the subjects. The subjects? pain severity in neck-shoulder region was assessed by Visual Analog Scale (VAS), DASH (Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder and Hand) and NPNP (Northwick Park Neck Pain) questionnaires were used to assess functional disability before and after exercise programme. Self-experienced total benefit from treatment of subjects was assessed by a five points scale. Results: Sixteen subjects (32.6 %) completed the 8 weeks home- based exercise programme. After the home-based execise programme, the pain severity and disability level of the subjects who completed the programme decreased significantly (p<0.05). After the treatmet, the average self-experienced total benefit was 4.25 in the compliant group. It was determined that the changes in the pain severity and disability level of the subjects who were noncompliant group weren?t statistically significant (p>0.05). Conclusion: The results suggest that a home-based exercise programme can be effective in reducing pain severity and improving functional disability in music students with neck? shoulder pain. However, compliance to this home-based programme and long-term effects of programme are questionable. In further studies; it must be searched the similar effects of the exercises which are increased the motivation of the participants and obtained high compliance rate with additional methods.