Nearly 80% of the entire population at some point in their lives will experience some form of low back pain. It is a relatively common disorder that can incapacitate and interrupt an individuals quality of life, highlighting the great burden its presents to society.1 Low back pain often translates to a decrease in daily activity, time lost from work and substantial medical expenses. Treatment for said ailments however are available. Chiropractic manipulation is one of the available rehabilitations used to combat this disorder with Spinal manipulative therapy (SMT), a widely practiced health intervention, being the main source of mediation administered by chiropractors (healthcare professionals dedicated to the non-surgical treatment of disorders …show more content…
However, this effect was only seen within the first 2 weeks after starting treatment. For patients with symptoms of less than 14 days or over 28 days, no differences in improvement were found between the manipulation and control groups for any follow up times. The meta-analysis also showed statistically significant short-term effects of spinal manipulation in hastening recovery from low back problems, of which is still sustained in more recent years. 3,4,5 However the size of these effects in the meta-analysis were small, drawing some questions over the clinical …show more content…
This essay has shown that while chiropractic interventions slightly improved pain and disability in the short-term, both recent and preceding accounts of evidence neither support nor refute that these interventions provide a clinically significant difference for pain or disability when compared to counterpart interventions. Moreover, chiropractic interventions were found to have no statistical or clinical advantage on pain and functional status over general practitioner care, analgesics, physical therapy, exercises, or back school. Contrary to these views however, a large majority of the findings all agreed on a similar notion that the practice itself carried no major adverse effects. Those that were noted nevertheless, were limited to muscle soreness, stiffness or a short-lived increase in