title: Independent evaluation of a clinical prediction rule for spinal manipulative therapy: a randomised controlled trial.
abstract: A clinical prediction rule to identify patients most likely to respond to spinal manipulation has been published and widely cited but requires further testing for external validity. We performed a pre-planned secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial investigating the efficacy of spinal manipulative therapy in 239 patients presenting to general practice clinics for acute, non-specific, low back pain. Patients were randomised to receive spinal manipulative therapy or placebo 2 to 3 times per week for up to 4 weeks. All patients received general practitioner care (advice and paracetamol). Outcomes were pain and disability measured at 1, 2, 4 and 12 weeks. Status on the clinical prediction rule was measured at baseline. The clinical prediction rule performed no better than chance in identifying patients with acute, non-specific low back pain most likely to respond to spinal manipulative therapy (pain P = 0.805, disability P = 0.600). At 1-week follow-up, the mean difference in effect of spinal manipulative therapy compared to placebo in patients who were rule positive rather than rule negative was 0.3 points less on a 10-point pain scale (95% CI -0.8 to 1.4). The clinical prediction rule proposed by Childs et al. did not generalise to patients presenting to primary care with acute low back pain who received a course of spinal manipulative therapy.
authors.affiliation: Back Pain Research Group, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, PO Box 170, Lidcombe, NSW, 1825, Australia. M.Hancock@usyd.edu.au
authors.forename: Mark J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hancock
authors.forename: Christopher G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Maher
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Latimer
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Herbert
authors.forename: James H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: McAuley
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D017116:Low Back Pain / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D020393:Manipulation, Spinal; D016896:Treatment Outcome