Authors: Carrie Ritchie, PhD1, Michele Sterling, PT, PhD1

Synopsis
Recovery from a whiplash injury is varied and complex. Some individuals recover quickly and fully, while others experience on-going pain and disability. Three distinct patterns of predicted recovery (trajectories) have been identified using disability and psychological outcome measures. These trajectories are not linear, and show that recovery, if it is going to occur, tends to happen within the first 3 months of the injury with little improvement after this period. Identification of factors associated with poor recovery is accumulating, and since 2000, there have been at least 10 published systematic reviews on prognostic factors for whiplash associated disorder (WAD). Poor recovery has been consistently reported to be associated with high initial neck pain intensity and neck-related disability, post-traumatic stress symptoms, pain catastrophizing, and to a lesser extent low self-efficacy and cold hyperalgesia. Evidence regarding factors including compensation status, some psychological factors, structural pathology, and pre-injury health status remain equivocal. Given the huge number of predictive factors and various interpretations of recovery, adapting these data for use in clinical practice is difficult. Tools such as clinical prediction rules (CPRs) may help by statistically quantifying relevant data to predict the probability of diagnosis, prognosis, or response to treatment. Numerous CPRs have been derived for individuals with whiplash, however to date, only 3 prognostic CPRs have undergone external validation and none have yet undergone impact analysis, a necessary step in providing information about the rules’ ability to improve clinically relevant outcomes. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther, Epub 3 Sep 2016. doi:10.2519/jospt.2016.6918