Comparative Study on the Effects of 3-Types of Pillows on Pressure Distribution and Cervical Alignment

Research Objectives: To inspect which pillow provides the most comfortable and ideal posture during sleep, which leads to high quality sleep.

Design: Blinded comparison, repeated measures design of 4 different pillow conditions: (a) without pillow, (b) neck support foam pillow(NSFP), (c) standard microfiber foam pillow(SFP), (d) hybrid foam pillow(HFP).

Setting: The experiment was conducted in university laboratory setting.

Participants: The study group comprised of twenty-eight healthy adults (mean age of 29 years old). Participants with neck pain due to neurological disorders, history of cervical spine and shoulder surgery, spinal-related neurological disorders, and/or serious neck pain were excluded.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures: Head-neck pressure distribution and muscle tone of sternocleidomastoid were measured to evaluate chin-sternum distance, craniovertebral angle, cranio-horizontal angle, and level of comfort of pillow.

Results: The head-neck peak pressure was highest in NSFP condition, and CVA and CHA of the SFP were lower than that of all other pillow conditions(p <.05). This indicates that NSFP may provide discomfort during sleep and that SFP may provide an undesirable forward-head posture with prolonged use.

Conclusions: We established the importance of pillow selection to have a high-quality sleep. Specifically, pillow design that combines cervical support and comfort provides even pressure distribution, which induces high-quality sleep by adjusting position of cervical spine closer to a normal alignment.

Author(s) Disclosures: The authors report no conflict of interest.