Course Details

What have we learned from the systematic review on spinal manipulative therapy published in the British Medical Journal?

We all know that low back pain is a common problem and costly burden to society. There are many promising treatments for chronic low back pain. The most commonly advocated treatments in national guidelines are exercise and cognitive behavioural therapy. But what about spinal manipulative therapy?

In order to best summarize the evidence, it is important to approach this systematically. As clinicians we are quite happy to cite those studies which demonstrate that SMT is an effective therapy, but tend to ignore or even find fault with those studies which cast doubt on its effectiveness, or suggest that other therapies might work better. This systematic review summarises ALL the available studies on SMT for chronic low back pain and thus, represent more accurately how SMT works in clinical practice. In this presentation, we spend the majority of the time presenting the lessons learned from this summary of the evidence. This review might not change the way you practice, but it can facilitate conversations with policymakers and other healthcare professionals where SMT is currently brought into question.