Acute Wry Neck

What is a wry neck?

his is a fancy way of saying a very sore neck. Neck pain – What a PIN. Have you ever woken up one morning and felt like your neck is drawer-off-its-runners stuck? And painful! Like a mini nail gun shooting little miserable nail-bullets every time you move? This may be what’s called Acute Torticollis, or more commonly, a ‘wry neck’. We often get the phone call first thing in the morning, from someone who has woken up with excruciating neck pain, with no obvious cause, other than they may have ‘slept funny’. Except, there’s nothing funny about neck pain.

Why do wry necks happen?

A wry neck is sudden or gradual onset of severe neck pain and stiffness/loss of movement. There are two structures that could be involved. 1. Facet joint (small joints either side of our vertebra) become ‘locked’ causing pain and protective muscle spasm throughout the neck. 2. Changes in the disc (cushion between each vertebra) which causes inflammation, placing pressure on the stuff around it. This tends to occur more gradually, and symptoms may radiate into the shoulder and arm.

What can you do about a wry neck?
Neck Physiotherapy in Newcastle.

Getting early treatment for a wry neck is the best way of improving symptoms. The aim of physio is no.1: decrease pain and increase movement. Your physio may use a combination of massage, joint mobilisations and exercises to achieve this and symptoms will typically resolve within 5-7 days, however may continue for up to 2 weeks. And no.2: It’s also important to check the other areas of your spine are moving to assess what might have started the onset of the wry neck. Get weak muscles stronger. If you don’t treat the cause – chances are you’ll be a regular visitor to the physio!

How long will a wry neck take?

You should start feeling better within 3 sessions of physio. If not – either we need to change the treatment or we need to change the diagnosis. Often it can take 4-6 wks to really start getting the root cause moving in the right direction. And, lets be honest, for proper strength change it might take 3-6 months.