Dr. Adams' Alabama Headache Blog

This study was designed to find whether there is any difference of head posture and neck function between patients with craniomandibular disorders and asymptomatic women. 40 female volunteers between 18 and 55 years of age joined the study: 20 CMD patients with chronic orofacial pain and frequent headache (equal of more than three times a month) and 20 age-matched asymptomatic women. Subjects in both groups had no history of physical trauma on the head and neck area in recent ten months. In present study, 70% (14) of twenty CMD patients had more than one headache per week, the mean frequency of headache in CMD patient was 8.83 per month. By using computer assisted video-digitizing posture analysis (VDPA)system which can provide life-sized, 640dpi X 480dpi resolution, true color images allowing hand digitizing, the head posture as well as full range of neck motion in three dimensions were recorded and computed. The validity of the VDPA system has been tested by repeated measurements of eleven angles and one linear distance. An extremely strong correlation was present between the readings from goniometer and VDPA system. The mean difference between ten repeated measurements was 0.12. A highly significant difference of eye-tragushorizontal angle was found between two groups as tested by Student's test. The CMD patients showed a more forward head posture. The CMD patients also had much less mean cervical movement in all three dimensions including bilateral side bending, rotation, and cervical extension/flexion than the asymptomatic group. These differences were significant as tested by Student t-test. The results strongly indicated that most of CMD female patients with frequent headache syndrome had cervical dysfunction. Thus, the evaluation of head posture and cervical function are recommended.