Title

Establishing reference values for cervical spine range of motion in pre-pubescent children

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-28-2008

Publication Title

Journal of Biomechanics

Abstract

Medical professionals, physical therapists, product designers, and computational models all use cervical spine range of motion reference values. To support these functions, researchers have collected a plethora of data to determine the normal range of motion of the cervical spine of adult subjects. However, little to no data exists for subjects under the age of 14. This study utilized the cervical range of motion device, referenced with respect to the Frankfort Plane, to measure the active cervical spine range of motion in all three cardinal planes of the human body, for 106 subjects whose ages ranged from 8 to 10 years. The active range of motion for flexion, extension, lateral extension, and rotation was calculated as 66±13°, 85±14°, 58±8°, and 77±7°, respectively, using linear statistics. The observed data significantly differed from the published American Medical Association guidelines for adults but fell within the range of the reference values for 10 year olds. Stratifying and analyzing the range of motion data with respect to gender yielded no significant effect. Appendix A analyzes the data using angular statistics, and produces virtually identical results as those from linear statistics.

Volume

41

Issue

12

First Page

2714

Last Page

2719

DOI

10.1016/j.jbiomech.2008.06.021

ISSN

0021-9290

Rights

© 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS