The prevalence of neck pain: a population-based study from northern Sweden

The two northernmost counties in Sweden form together 1 of the 39 collaborating centers in the World Health Organization (WHO) MONICA (MONItoring of trends and determinants in CArdiovascular disease) project. At the last survey in 1999, we added some questions about cervical spine complaints. Persons randomly selected from the population in a geographically well-defined area completed a self-administered questionnaire. The sample included 8,356 subjects and 6,000 (72%) of them answered. 43% of the population reported neck pain, more women (48%) than men (38%). Women of working age had more neck pain than older ones, a phenomenon not seen among men. Chronic neck pain, defined as continuous pain of more than 6 months' duration, was commoner in women (22%) than men (16%). More than one fourth of the cases with chronic symptoms had a history of neck or head trauma and one third of these had sustained a whiplash type of injury. Thus, all types of neck trauma seem to be associated with chronic neck pain.