Background: Cervical proprioception can be affected in patients with neck pain. Clinically, cervical joint position error (JPE) is commonly assessed as absolute error (AE) only.

Objectives: Assess cervical JPE in neck patients compared to an asymptomatic control group using the laser-pointer with a new type of target to assess reposition error as AE, constant error (CE) & variable error (VE). Also, investigate associations between joint positional sense (JPS) and pain, neck disability and pain-on-movement within the neck pain group.

Design: A cross-sectional study

Method: Twenty-six patients with neck pain (NP) without traumatic onset were compared to a group of thirty asymptomatic controls (CON). Joint positional sense was assessed in cervical flexion, extension and left and right rotation using a laser-pointer and a target board with stripes orthogonal to movement direction. JPE was calculated as AE, CE and VE for each movement direction. Additionally, neck pain and disability, and pain-on-movement were assessed in the NP group.

Results/findings: Results showed no significant difference between NP and CON except for CE in rotation left (p=0.00). Within the NP group, significant positive correlations were revealed for cervical JPE and pain-on-movement for VE in rotation bilaterally and extension, and AE in extension. Weaker but significant correlations were found for current pain and VE in rotation bilaterally and AE in extension, as well as neck disability and VE in extension and right rotation.

Conclusions: Small or no differences were found between groups, but positive correlations were found for cervical JPE and symptoms, especially VE and pain-on-movement, in the NP group. The result may be related to the relatively low disability scores in the NP group.