Effectiveness of neurodynamic techniques in conservative treatment of cervical spine radiculopathy-critical evaluation of the literature

Authors: Piotr Liniewski, Tomasz Buczek, Katarzyna Michalak, Paweł Linek, Tomasz Wolny

Published online:  12 October 2020

Abstract: Cervical radiculopathy is a neurological condition caused by compression and/or a lesion on the nerve roots of the cervical spine, which results in local and radiating pain and many sensory, motor and neurovegetative disorders. In physiotherapy of patients with cervical radiculopathy, neurodynamic techniques are commonly used; however, scientific reports do not clearly confirm the beneficial effects of using these techniques. Therefore, an attempt was made to critically evaluate the studies carried out so far, in which neurodynamic techniques were used in the conservative treatment of cervical radiculopathy. The PUBMED database and Google Scholar were searched for articles. The search terms were combinations of words (in English) containing the full version and abbreviated names of the following expressions: cervical radiculopathy, neuromobilization, neurodynamic techniques and manual therapy. Ten scientific papers met the requirements for inclusion in this article. In most of them, apart from neurodynamic techniques, other therapeutic measures were used, which made it difficult to assess the beneficial effects of neurodynamic techniques. The studies most often evaluated pain, range of motion, subjective symptoms and neck instability. The therapy used both neurodynamic techniques performed passively by a physiotherapist and auto-neuromobilization techniques. 1) Based on the review of previous studies assessing the effectiveness of neurodynamic techniques in the therapy of patients with cervical radiculopathy, it can be concluded that in most of them beneficial effects of therapy were observed. 2) Due to differences in both participants and research methodology, it is difficult to clearly confirm the effectiveness of neurodynamic techniques. 3) Therefore, further research with high scientific value is required to confirm the effectiveness of neurodynamic techniques in the conservative treatment of cervical radiculopathy.