Managing Injuries of the Neck Trial (MINT)

The MINT trial was led by Professor Sallie Lamb at the University of Warwick. The project was funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme and involved a randomised controlled trial of treatments for whiplash injuries.

MINT suggested that enhanced psycho-educational interventions in emergency departments are no more effective than usual care advice in reducing the burden of acute whiplash injuries.

A physiotherapy package provided to people who had persisting symptoms within the first 6 weeks of injury produced additional short-term benefits in neck disability compared with a single physiotherapy advice session.

However, from a healthcare perspective, the physiotherapy package was not cost-effective at current levels of willingness to pay. Both experimental treatments were associated with increased cost with no discernible gain in health-related quality of life. However, an important benefit of the physiotherapy package was a reduction in work days lost; consequently, the intervention may prove cost-effective at the societal level. 

This trial is closed and results were published in December 2012. Read the final report.