Normative cervical spine kinematics of a circumduction task

Neck pain is a prevalent condition and clinical examination techniques are limited and unable to assess out-of-plane motion. Recent works investigating cervical kinematics during neck circumduction (NC), a dynamic 3D task, has shown the ability to discern those with and without neck pain. The purposes of this study were to establish 1) confidence and prediction intervals of head-to-torso kinematics during NC in a healthy cohort, 2) a baseline summative metric to quantify the duration and magnitude of deviations outside the prediction interval, and 3) the reliability of NC. Thirty-nine participants (25.6 ± 6.3 years, 19F/20M) without neck pain completed left and right NC. A two-way smoothing spline analysis of variance was utilized to determine the mean-fitted values and 90% confidence and prediction intervals for NC. A standardized effect size was calculated and aggregated across all axes (Delta RMSD aggregate), as a summative metric of motion quality. Confidence and prediction intervals were comparable for left and right NC and demonstrated excellent reliability. The average sum of the Delta RMSD aggregate was 2.76 ± 0.55 for left NC and 2.74 ± 0.63 for right NC. The results of this study demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing normative intervals of a NC task to assess head-to-torso kinematics.