Immediate effects from manual therapy: much ado about nothing?
Three articles on PainSci cite Cook 2011: 1. Complete Guide to Frozen Shoulder 2. “Windows of Opportunity” in Rehab 3. What Works for Pain?
PainSci commentary on Cook 2011: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
This short but technical article makes a simple, important point: we’ve seen a lot of less-than-awesome research showing that essentially any treatment can probably provide statistically significant immediate benefits (because pain is readily modulated by novel sensory input), but “the limited effect size for many … raises concerns about their clinical significance” and “may not provide substantial value during long-term, progressive, clinical decision making.”
What we need to further flesh out is which set of interventions that lead to immediate effects that are designed to define a clinical outcome, actually lead to long-term clinical benefits. What we don’t need is a litany of further studies that assume clinical importance because immediate effects occurred directly after the administration of a manual therapy intervention; we've got that covered.
related content
- “Closing the window of opportunity …,” Adam Meakins, Thesports.physio.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Association of Lumbar MRI Findings with Current and Future Back Pain in a Population-based Cohort Study. Kasch 2022 Spine (Phila Pa 1976).
- A double-blinded randomised controlled study of the value of sequential intravenous and oral magnesium therapy in patients with chronic low back pain with a neuropathic component. Yousef 2013 Anaesthesia.
- Is Neck Posture Subgroup in Late Adolescence a Risk Factor for Persistent Neck Pain in Young Adults? A Prospective Study. Richards 2021 Phys Ther.
- Sudden amnesia resulting in pain relief: the relationship between memory and pain. Choi 2007 Pain.
- Photobiomodulation therapy is not better than placebo in patients with chronic nonspecific low back pain: a randomised placebo-controlled trial. Guimarães 2021 Pain.