Whiplash Neck Exercises: Online Support vs Clinic Visits

A team of scientists compared two ways to treat long-term neck pain from whiplash. One group followed a three-month exercise plan online. They also met a physiotherapist four times. The other group did the same exercises at a clinic. They went two times each week. That added up to twenty-four clinic visits.

One hundred forty people joined the study. Everyone had moderate or severe whiplash that had lasted for some time. Researchers tracked them for fifteen months. The goal was to see which choice offered better value for the money spent. The main number they watched was the cost-effectiveness ratio.

The online program cost about twelve thousand eight hundred eighty-two Swedish kronor. The clinic visits cost about forty thousand eighty-seven Swedish kronor. One Swedish kronor equaled ten cents in US dollars at the time of the report. This made the internet option far less expensive. Still, the clinic group ended with a slightly higher quality-of-life score.

The quality-of-life score for the online group was zero point six six two. For the clinic group, it was zero point seven one one. To gain one extra quality point using the online method, the cost was more than five hundred fifty-five thousand kronor. That is a high price for a small gain.

There was a fifty-seven percent chance that the online option made sense if a decision-maker was willing to pay five hundred thousand kronor per quality point. Yet the online method led to a small drop in quality of life compared with the clinic method. Costs for health care in both groups changed the final calculation when researchers tested different scenarios.