The purpose of this study is to determine whether two osteopathic evaluators with less than 5 years experience will be able to determine the same location and nature of the primary lesion(s) or restriction(s)in patients with chronic non-specific back pain using a global osteopathic evaluation approach.
Back pain is one of the leading causes of consultation for rehabilitation. Establishing a diagnosis in the initial patient assessment is essential to choosing a specific treatment plan for that patient, regardless of the type of therapy the patient chooses to pursue. Evidence based medicine is the current gold standard for most manual-therapy professions, and there has been a great deal of research performed in an attempt to give credibility to the one tool that all manual therapy professions share in common: palpation. Few studies have been able to demonstrate an acceptable rate of inter-examiner reliability for palpation. This study will combine a global testing regime, consensus training for evaluators, and access to history of injury with symptomatic subjects to verify the inter-examiner reliability of an osteopathic evaluation on patients with chronic, non-specific low back pain.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
20
2 general osteopathic evaluations of approximately 1 hour in duration done consecutively on the same day with a 15 minute break between evaluations
Concordia Physio Sport
Brossard, Quebec, Canada
Inter-examiner reliability
Inter-examiner reliability between two evaluators for nature and location of primary restriction(s), lesion(s) found during a global osteopathic evaluation
Time frame: Day 1
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