A Neck Support for Alleviating Occupational Neck Pain

Abstract

While neck pain is common among occupations such as dentistry and machine operations which require static neck flexion, few products are available to alleviate workers’ neck pain while still permitting them to perform their daily tasks. Therefore, the goal of this project is to develop a neck support which alleviates neck pain while still allowing workers to comfortably perform all tasks. To accomplish this goal, we designed a device which supports the head and redistributes neck muscle loads during neck flexion to the upper body. We also built a prototype of our design and used surface electromyography (EMG) testing to evaluate its efficacy. EMG results showed that our device decreases neck muscle activity during flexion by 60% overall and 80% for certain subjects. Statistical analysis of the EMG results using repeated measures analysis of variance also showed our device’s reduction in neck muscle activity was statistically significant.