As the ninth most cause of disability health condition among women, chronic neck pain can also alter pain processing. These individuals have local and remote hyperalgesia, higher temporal summation (TS) and lower efficiency in conditioned pain modulation (CPM), reinforcing the need to evaluate these outcomes since they are predictors of poor prognosis (greater pain and disability). Quantitative sensory tests (QST) represent an important tool in assessing the processing of sensory stimuli. In addition, therapeutic exercise is consolidated as the first line of treatment, capable of modulating neurophysiological responses to pain. Given the prognostic potential of QSTs and that they can be altered by exercise, it is necessary to investigate how they are used in the literature as well as the existing gaps in their use, to provide relevant information for researchers and clinicians to improve their prescription of therapeutic exercises for this population.

To synthesize the evidence on the use of QSTs as outcome of interventions with therapeutic exercises in chronic neck pain.

A scoping review that followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMAScR) guidelines and was filed with PROSPERO (CRD42022298811). PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, PEDro, SportDiscus and CENTRAL databases were consulted until December 2021. Titles, abstracts, and full text were independently selected by two researchers. Randomized clinical trials of non-specific chronic neck pain that used therapeutic exercise as one of the interventions were included. Data on location, year of publication, participants, outcomes, evaluated points and methodologies were extracted.

2909 articles were found. Of these, 27 articles were included with a total of 1585 participants (97% women). Studies were concentrated in the Nordic countries (40%) and Spain (25%) and the majority (14 articles) were published from 2015 onwards, which demonstrates a growing interest in the area in the last decade. Pressure pain threshold (PPT) was the most evaluated outcome (100% of the studies), however thermal pain threshold, vibratory threshold, TS and CPM were evaluated in only 1 study each. The most evaluated local points were the upper trapezius muscle (74%) and scapula elevator (29%); and remotely, the tibialis anterior (29%). Regarding the methodology, the PPT is more standardized in the literature, using the average of 3 measurements for the analyses.

The use of QSts in clinical trials in the field of neck pain is still very limited and little explored, but an increase in publications has been observed in recent years. Furthermore, only the PPT was better investigated with an established methodology, highlighting the gap with other QSTs.

This scope review carried out a relevant survey of the literature considering neck pain as an important public health problem and the influence of pain processing on chronification processes and success of interventions with exercise therapies. More studies on this review topic are still needed to improve the understanding of pain processing when an individual is submitted to therapeutic exercises.