Investigation of Effects of Physiotherapy Interventions on Mechanical Properties of Muscle in Head and Neck Cancer

Summary

As the head and neck cancer (HNC) survival rate has increased and therefore, the focus of post-treatments is to improve the quality of patients' life by decreasing the side effects. Treatment of HNC leads to acute and chronic soft tissue damage, and functional loss. However, patients with HNC need having rehabilitation throughout the post-treatment phase so as to improve functional outcomes because of the long term side effects. Chronic shoulder morbidity is one of the complications after surgery due to spinal accesory nerve injury. Moreover, pain, dysphonia, and musculoskeletal impairments are observed in the individuals after the treatments and the patients also have trouble swallowing problems, loss of taste, dry mouth, trismus, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue during and after therapy. Since there is limited research on the usage of manual therapy techniques in HNC patients, this study aims to investigate muscle changes after surgery and the effectiveness of physiotherapy on muscle material behaviour from a biomechanical perspective by using shear wave elastography. In this respect, the hypothesis is:

H0: Physical therapy interventions do not impact mechanical properties of muscle, pain, quality of life, cervical and shoulder functionality in HNC patients after neck dissection.

H1: Physical therapy interventions will improve mechanical properties of muscle, pain, quality of life, cervical and shoulder functionality in HNC patients after neck dissection.

Conditions

• Head and Neck Cancer
• Spinal Accessory Nerve Injury
• Thyroid Cancer
• Scapular Dyskinesis
• Cervical Pain
• Shoulder Pain

Interventions

OTHER

Myofascial Release Technique

Sternocleidomastoid, Upper trapezius, Suboccipital region, Scalenes, Pectoral release, Scapular and hyoid mobilization techniques. Duration: 6 weeks, 1 supervised session per week, and the session lasted 30 minutes.

OTHER

Exercise

Therapeutic exercise: passive and active range of motion, strengthening and postural exercise in order to improve shoulder and cervical mobility, muscle flexibility, strength and endurance, postural control and movement patterns; 2) stretching of pectoral muscles and serratus anterior; 3) scar tissue massage to reduce scar tissue's stiffness. Duration of the intervention: 6 weeks (1 supervised session and 2 individual per week). Each exercise will be done 1-3 sets and 5-10 repetitions.The session lasted 30 minutes. Exercise diary will be utilized in order to follow the exercise program.

OTHER

Scar Tissue Massage

Circular, Up and Down, Side to Side technique

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Yeditepe University Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• Yeditepe University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Ali F OKYAR, Dr. · Yeditepe University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-11-10

Primary Completion

2024-01-01

Completion

2024-08-01

Countries

• Turkey (Türkiye)

Study Locations