Benefits and harms of spinal manipulative therapy for the treatment of chronic low back pain: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials
A ChiroSecure Research Update
Abstract: Objective To assess the benefits and harms of spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) for the treatment of chronic low back pain.
Discussions: 47 randomised controlled trials including a total of 9211 participants were identified, who were on average middle aged (35-60 years). Most trials compared SMT with recommended therapies. Moderate quality evidence suggested that SMT has similar effects to other recommended therapies for short term pain relief (mean difference −3.17, 95% confidence interval −7.85 to 1.51) and a small, clinically better improvement in function (SMD −0.25, 95% confidence interval −0.41 to −0.09). High quality evidence suggested that compared with non-recommended therapies SMT results in small, not clinically better effects for short term pain relief (mean difference −7.48, −11.50 to −3.47) and small to moderate clinically better improvement in function (SMD −0.41, −0.67 to −0.15). In general, these results were similar for the intermediate and long term outcomes as were the effects of SMT as an adjuvant therapy. Evidence for sham SMT was low to very low quality; therefore these effects should be considered uncertain. Statistical heterogeneity could not be explained. About half of the studies examined adverse and serious adverse events, but in most of these it was unclear how and whether these events were registered systematically. Most of the observed adverse events were musculoskeletal related, transient in nature, and of mild to moderate severity. One study with a low risk of selection bias and powered to examine risk (n=183) found no increased risk of an adverse event (relative risk 1.24, 95% confidence interval 0.85 to 1.81) or duration of the event (1.13, 0.59 to 2.18) compared with sham SMT. In one study, the Data Safety Monitoring Board judged one serious adverse event to be possibly related to SMT.
Conclusion: SMT produces similar effects to recommended therapies for chronic low back pain, whereas SMT seems to be better than non-recommended interventions for improvement in function in the short term. Clinicians should inform their patients of the potential risks of adverse events associated with SMT.
Reference: Rubinstein, S. M., de Zoete, A., van Middelkoop, M., Assendelft, W. J. J., de Boer, M. R., & van Tulder, M. W. (2019). Benefits and harms of spinal manipulative therapy for the treatment of chronic low back pain: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 364, l689. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l689 [1]