Letter to the Editor: Influence of Tensioner’s Mobilization on the Centralization of Symptoms in Cervicobrachial Pain Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Article information

Asian Spine J. 2023;17(1):222-223

Publication date (electronic) : 2023 February 23

doi : https://doi.org/10.31616/asj.2022.0449.r1

Diggaj Shrestha, Sunita Sharma

Department of Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy, Maharishi Markandeshwar Institute of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Maharishi Markandeshwar (Deemed to be University), Mullana, India

Corresponding author: Sunita Sharma Department of Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy, Maharishi Markandeshwar Institute of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Maharishi Markandeshwar (Deemed to be University), Mullana-133207, Haryana, India Tel: +91-9467633734, E-mail: drsunita.sharma@mmumullana.org

Received 2022 December 19; Revised 2023 January 9; Accepted 2023 January 9.

Dear Editor,

To start with, I would like to congratulate the authors of the published original article titled, “Influence of tensioner’s mobilization on the centralization of symptoms in cervicobrachial pain syndrome: a randomized controlled trial” in your prestige Journal “Asian Spine Journal” by Sudhakar et al. [1]. We have read the article with great interest but also some points need clarification as mentioned below:

Firstly, in the abstract study design section, the authors have not mentioned the blinding of the study. If mentioned, it would have eased the reader. According to the journal guidelines, authors should use Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines by Schulz et al. [2], but the authors have not used these guidelines properly for the study. Authors have calculated the sample size from articles by Anikwe et al. [3], but the outcome measures and the condition of treatment used in that article are different from the above study which clearly violates the rule for sample size estimation [4]. The authors should have calculated the sample size by the same outcome measures used in the previous study.

Authors have used the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for testing the normality of the data for the given sample size of 33, whereas it is generally used in handling larger sample sizes with more than 50 samples [5]. It would have been more appropriate if the authors used the ShapiroWilk test. In the discussion and result section, the tabular presentation of results of between the group and within the group of pre-treatment and post-treatment of both experimental and control groups would have given more easiness for the reader of this article along with the effect size and the power of the study.

The study presented the importance of tensioner’s mobilization in the treatment of cervicobrachial pain syndrome in an excellent way. We appreciate this innovative study in the field of physiotherapy but we would just like to inform authors to be more cautious while preparing the study design and interpretation of the results.