Conservative Primary Care Management for Recent Onset Cervical Radiculopathy – a Systematic Review & Meta-analysis Protocol

Review question / Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of conservative management available in primary care for adults with recent onset (less than 12 weeks) cervical radiculopathy. Conservative management will be compared to any available comparator i.e. no treatment, placebo or any treatment. Eligibility criteria: Inclusion criteria – trials (as defined in item 15) investigating any conservative management (e.g. exercise, advice, manual therapy, traction, acupuncture, pharmacology etc), involving adults with single level CR (as defined in item 10) of any aetiology, with symptom duration of 12 weeks or less, and including 1 or more of the following outcomes i.e. pain, disability, overall improvement or satisfaction with intervention, quality of life or participation restriction. Exclusion criteria – full text not available, not a randomised controlled trial, trials not involving CR (e.g. cervicobrachial pain, neck pain only), trials involving chronic CR, multilevel or bilateral CR (polyradiculopathy) or radiculomyelopathy, major or systemic pathology, post-surgery interventions, trials of surgery or spinal injection only, or involving a paediatric population or not in English language.