Effectiveness of biofeedback, active exercise and passive treatment on work-related musculoskeletal disorders: preliminary results of a randomized clinical trial

摘要

The present study aimed to compare the effects of different interventions, including biofeedback, passive treatment modalities, and active exercise training on patients with work-related musculoskeletal disorders. The study is a randomized clinical trial (RCT) with 4 groups: biofeedback, active exercise, passive treatment and control group. Subjects were male and female daily computer users and must have had a past and present history of computer-related neck and shoulder discomforts. They were compared in terms of the effects of the 6-weeks' intervention on their pain (verbal numerical scale 0-10) and surface electromyography (sEMG) during a simulated computing task. The present study mainly reports on the results of the pilot study. Altogether 23 subjects (9 males, 14 females) have been recruited so far and randomly allocated to each of the 4 groups. After the 6-week intervention program, preliminary analysis revealed that the results of discomfort and sEMG showed trends of positive improvement in all 3 intervention groups (biofeedback, active exercise, and passive treatment). Further study with about 15～20 subjects in each group needs to be conducted in order to confirm the differences in outcomes between the different intervention groups.