Spinal Manipulative Therapy

The results cited above plainly reveal that there is some debate about the efficacy of spinal manipulation as a short term and long term curative for chronic low back pain. Many of the studies employed accepted inventories and scales, but they also tend to be small. This might explain why no overarching consensus has yet arrived.
Spinal manipulative therapy has some critics who are unconvinced that it surpasses other conventional treatment intervention. For example, Laura Palomo et al (2012) compared the use of electro-therapeutic massage with superficial massage or manipulation and just the superficial massage, concluding the combination of the two treatments provided the greatest reduction for sufferers of low back pain. Castro-Sanchez et al (2015) constructed a rigorous single-blind, randomized, pragmatic controlled trial which found that spinal manipulative therapy seems to reduce disability in patients with chronic lower back pain, but did not resolve or reduce pain or isometric resistance of trunk flexors; it also did not reduce fear of movement, concluding there were no conspicuous short-term benefits to be gained from spinal manipulation relative to functional technique therapy (Castro-Sanchez et al, 2015). Brontfort et al (2011) used 301 subjects, and compared
Their study was small in number, 56 subjects at the 1 year follow up, but they still found that certain subgroups may benefit more from spinal manipulation and showed a lower number of hypomobility episodes during the follow up (Rasmussen et al. 2008). This study is further supported by the guidelines set forth by Chou et al (2007) for the diagnosis and treatment of low back pain, which stated that alternative therapies like spinal manipulation should be reserved for patients who were refractory to first line treatments like self care and