Cervical and Mandibular Pain and Disorders in Wind Players Clinical Trial
Official title:
Prevention Programme for Cervicomandibular Musculoskeletal Injuries in Wind Musicians
Musicians are a group with a high prevalence of musculoskeletal injuries. In particular, wind musicians, due to their playing requirements, are prone to suffer from cervical and mandibular alterations. For this reason, a specific exercise programme has been designed with the aim of analysing its effectiveness in improving these regions.
This study is a clinical trial with a control group whose participants are university music students specialising in wind instrument performance. The intervention of the participants in the Experimental Group consists of the individual performance of a specific programme of warm-up exercises prior to instrumental practice aimed at improving the mobility and strength of the cervical and mandibular regions, as well as a series of cool-down exercises after instrumental practice based on stretching the main muscles of both regions. Participants in the Control Group will continue their normal life without performing any specific exercise previously taught by the researchers. For the evaluation of the programme, an initial evaluation and a re-evaluation after 12 weeks will be carried out. In both, cervical and jaw mobility as well as body posture will be assessed. In addition, at the muscular level, the activity of the upper trapezius and masseter muscles will be assessed, and the pain threshold at trigger points will also be measured. The hypotheses are that by carrying out the exercise programme designed for wind musicians, an improvement in body posture, in the range of cervical and jaw mobility and in muscle activation will be achieved, as well as a decrease in the pain threshold. For the study of the results, an inferential statistical analysis of the data will be carried out using the Wilcoxon test for paired data or Student's t-test for repeated measures according to the sample characteristics in order to determine the effect of the exercise programme on the different variables of the experimental process. Correlation statistics will be used to establish the association between certain quantitative explanatory variables and ANOVA for categorical variables. The level of significance will be kept at p<.05 and all calculations will be carried out using the SPSS 22.0 statistical programme. ;