Neck Disability Index

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Objective

The NDI is a modification of the Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Index. It 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 . The NDI is translated in many languages (greek, german, dutch, Korean, Spanish, frensh…) each has its own validity and reliability outcomes. Because there is an impact of translation on validity.
The NDI can be used for evaluating the patients status praeses and evolution during the therapy 13 (intended population).

Intended Population

Chronic neck pain, musculoskeletal neck pain and whiplash injuries.

Method of Use

The NDI can be scored as raw score or doubled, and expressed as a percent . Each section is scored on a 0-5 scale, with the first statement being “0” (ie. No pain) and the last statement being “5” (ie. Worst imaginable pain). Al the points are than summed. Interpretation of the test can be numeric form 0 points to 50 points. It can also be calculated in percentages.
0 points or 0% means : no activity limitations ,
50points or 100% means complete activity limitation.

A higher score indicates more patient-rated disability. There is no statement in the original literature on how to handle missing data. To use the NDI for patient decisions, a clinically important change was calculated as 5 points, with a sensitivity of 0.78 and a specificity of 0.80.

Mean duration of the test: 3 to 7.8 minutes
Some benchmarks can be found in literature but methodologically they were not described and theire validity and reliability are questionable Vernon and Moir presented the following interpretation:
• 0-4points (0-8%) no disability,
• 5-14points ( 10 – 28%) mild disability,
• 15-24points (30-48% ) moderate disability,
• 25-34points (50- 64%) severe disability,
• 35-50points (70-100%) complete disability

Evidence

Reliability

Vernon H, Mior S. (1991) The neck disability index: A study of reliability and validity. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 14, 409-15

Validity

Mark Chan Ci En, Dean A. Clair and Stephen J. Edmondston. Manual Therapy, 2009, 14(4):433-438

Responsiveness

The NDI appears to demonstrate adequate responsiveness in patients with neck pain and concomitant upper extrmity referred symptoms. Young et al suggest that a 10-point change should be used as the minimum clinically important difference.

Riddle DL, Stratford PW. Use of generic versus region specific functional status measures on patients with cervical spine disorders. Physical Therapy, 1998;78:951-963

Miscellaneous

Stratford PW, Riddle DL, Binkley JM et al (1999) Using the neck disability index to make decisions concerning individual patients Physiotherapy Canada, 2,107-112.

Jette DU, Jette AM (1996) Physical therapy and health outcomes in patients with spinal impairments. Physical Therapy 76, 930-45

Links

View Neck Disability Index

Recent Related Research (from Pubmed)

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References

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