Resounding Results RESULTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES


Why do patients request and return for chiropractic care?


A recent study led by investigators at the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research, done in conjunction with the RAND Corporation and the Samueli Institute, found that patients suffering from low-back pain who received chiropractic care in addition to usual medical care had better short-term improvements in low-back pain intensity and pain-related disability when compared with those who received usual medical care alone.


Results of this groundbreaking research are chronicled in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s online JAMA Network Open.34


The study—the largest randomized clinical


trial in chiropractic research in the United States to date—took place from September 2012 to February 2016 and involved 750 active-duty U.S. military personnel at three sites across the country.


The prevalence of low-back pain among U.S. adults is estimated at 20 percent, with 50 percent to 80 percent of people reporting a significant episode at some point in their life. Low-back pain is also one of the most common causes of disability in U.S. military personnel.35


So the policy implications for offering and


insuring conservative care like chiropractic for such a large governmental patient group are broad and encouraging.


“This patient-centered, multi-site, pragmatic clinical trial provides the strongest evidence to date that chiropractic care is safe, effective and can be integrated into multidisciplinary healthcare settings,” said Christine Goertz, D.C., Ph.D., lead author of the military personnel study. “These findings are critical as the United States healthcare system looks for ways to implement existing national guidelines from groups such as the American College of Physicians and the Joint Commission that recommend non-drug approaches, such as spinal manipulative therapy, as the first line of care for low-back pain.”36


Such evidence also could translate into reduced spending on claims — and ignoring it could be costly. A 2018 international clinical study published in The Lancet concluded that “without the collaborative efforts of [patients], policy makers, clinicians and researchers necessary to develop and implement effective solutions, disability rates, and expenditure for low-back pain, will continue to rise”.37


18 PALMER COLLEGE OF CHIROPRACTIC


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