？Podemos predecir clínicamente la cervicoartrosis?

background: ignorance of the value of the physical cervical exploration. objective: to establish the predictivity and utility of several cervical maneuvres in relation to cervicoarthrosis. design: descriptive transversal study with systematic sampling. patients and methods: a series of 100 patients whom were realized a cervical radiological exploration in the radiodiagnosis service (from january to march 2000), were evaluated with two physical explorations (cervical rotation test measured with a static goniometer and chest-chin test). the results were compared with the evaluation we obtain of the radiological exploration that was realized by a radiologists who did not know the result of the clinical exploration. results: when the lateral cervical rotation was smaller than 56 degrees, we obtained a positive predictive value of 85%, a sensibility of 81% and a specificity of 61%. the cervical clinical assesment with these two tests was correlated in a significant way with the radiological examination, without achieving a significant kappa index. a maneuver of normal cervical rotation (same or bigger than 70 degrees) excluded cervicoartrosis. conclusions: the cervical rotation test has a clinical relevance and the combination with other exploratory maneouvres act as a clinical tool for the radiological evaluation.