Prevalence of neck disability due to text neck in the population of goa: A survey

Background: Text neck is an overuse syndrome involving the head, neck and shoulders, usually resulting from excessive strain on the spine from looking in a forward and downward position at any hand held mobile device. This can cause headaches, neck pain, shoulder and arm pain, breathing compromise, and much more. Objectives: To find out the prevalence of Neck disability due to Text neck in the population of Goa. Methods: The questionnaire of the Neck Disability Index (NDI) of populations results will be applied in order to gather the related data. The NDI is a patient-completed, condition-specific functional status questionnaire with 10 items including pain, personal care, lifting, reading, headaches, concentration, work, driving, sleeping and recreation. The NDI has sufficient support and usefulness to retain its current status as the most commonly used self-report measure for neck pain. NDI has a high degree of reliability, internal consistency and validity for assessing neck disability. Procedure-A total of 500 subjects will be selected by simple random sampling for the study after signing the informed consent fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Inclusion Criteria: Sex: Male and Female of ages 18 to 30 years, Subjects using smart phones more than one year and Subjects who agree to fill the informed consent Exclusion Criteria: Subjects will be excluded if they have had history of neck trauma or surgery or with a medical diagnosis of fibromyalgia, cervical radiculopathy, a systemic illness, or connective tissue disorder, Subjects with epilepsy ,Subjects with any orthopaedic condition, Subjects with any neuropathic condition like PPRP ,Subjects with previous Cervical fracture , Subjects with Vertigo , Software engineers and clerical staff , Subjects who do not agree to fill the informed consent. Results: The aim of the study was to find the prevalence of text neck in the population of Goa. Data analysis showed that of the 500 subjects, 473 subjects have mild to severe disability and 27 subjects had no difficulty/ disability at all. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggests that there is high prevalence of Text neck in the population of Goa .There is also a significant amount of disability associated with the presence of Text neck.