Effects of Autogenic and Reciprocal Inhibition, Muscle Energy Techniques in the Management of Mechanical Neck Pain

Neck pain is among the most common musculoskeletal disorders worldwide and is an important public health issue in terms of personal wellbeing. Prevalence of neck pain show excessive variations, with a point prevalence varying between 6% and 22%, and one year prevalence ranging between 1.5-75%. Neck pain like all other mechanical disorders leads to pain, disability and decreased range of motion (ROM). Stretching is a very common exercise performed by sportsmen, elderly, in physical therapy and rehabilitation patients, thus practiced in all sorts of fitness programs. The major types of stretching included in the literature are static, dynamic and pre-contraction stretching; of which static stretching is the conventional type of stretching. The different types of pre-contraction stretching include Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF) stretching, Post Isometric Relaxation (PIR), Post Facilitation stretch (PFS) and Active Isolated Stretch (AIS). Pre-contraction stretching is also considered a part of Muscle Energy Technique (MET). Recently MET and pre-contraction stretching have been shown to have significant superiority over conventional stretching in management of mechanical neck pain, but the evidence is currently lacking regarding which of the two pre-contraction stretching protocols, namely autogenic and reciprocal inhibition is more effective than the other. A RCT will be conducted in order to find and compare the effectiveness of conventional stretching and pre-contraction stretching (autogenic inhibition and reciprocal inhibition). One Control group (conventional group) and two Experimental groups (Experimental Group A - Autogenic Inhibition & Experimental Group B - Reciprocal Inhibition) will be formed. The participants will be recruited in the study if they meet the inclusion criteria using consecutive sampling from Fauji Foundation Hospital and randomized into the three respective groups. All the groups will receive the gold standard treatment for chronic neck pain including mobilization and modalities. In addition to the gold standard treatment the participants will receive specific stretching protocol based on their interventional group