Using the neck torsion manoeuvre to identify a cervical cause of postural instability

Background: Disturbed postural stability in neck pain is likely due to dysfunction of cervical afferent function. However there are several other potential causes of altered postural stability such as vestibular pathology, and there is a need for specific tests to help differentiate the underlying cause. The neck torsion (head still body rotated) manoeuvre acts to stimulate the cervical receptors but not the vestibular receptors and has shown potential to be useful to identify abnormal cervical afferent input, as an underlying cause of balance disturbances in patients with whiplash associated disorders (WAD) and idiopathic neck pain (INP).

Source: Manual Therapy - April 1, 2017 Category: Physiotherapy Authors: J. Treleaven, K. Williams Source Type: research