SynthesisThe Journal of manual & manipulative therapy2024
Does manual therapy meaningfully change quantitative sensory testing and patient reported outcome measures in patients with musculoskeletal impairments related to the spine?: A 'trustworthy' systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in The Journal of manual & manipulative therapy, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Caution is necessary in interpreting musculoskeletal physiotherapy intervention outcomes: a methodological review of physiotherapy neuromusculoskeletal reviews.The Journal of manual & manipulative therapy · 2025Pooled it
- Is there 'trustworthy' evidence for using manual therapy to treat patients with shoulder dysfunction?: A systematic review.PloS one · 2024Pooled it
- Multidimensional Effects of Manual Therapy Combined with Pain Neuroscience-Based Sensorimotor Retraining in a Patient with Chronic Neck Pain: A Case Study Using fNIRS.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The mechanisms of manual therapy: A living review of systematic, narrative, and scoping reviews.PloS one · 2025Article
- 'Trustworthy' systematic reviews can only result in meaningful conclusions if the quality of randomized clinical trials and the certainty of evidence improves: an update on the 'trustworthy' living systematic review project.The Journal of manual & manipulative therapy · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesTo perform a 'trustworthy' systematic review (SR) with meta-analysis on the potential mechanisms of manual therapy used to treat spinal impairments.
designSR with meta-analysis. LITERATURE SEARCH: Articles published between January 2010 and October 2022 from CENTRAL, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, ProQuest, and PEDro.
methodsThis SR included English-language randomized clinical trials (RCTs) involving manual therapy to treat spinal impairments in adults. The primary outcome was pressure pain thresholds (PPTs). To synthesize RCTs with high confidence in estimated effects using the GRADE, RCTs with questionable prospective, external, and internal validity, and high risk of bias (RoB) were excluded.
resultsFollowing title and abstract screening, 89 full-text RCTs were reviewed. Twenty-two studies included the criteria of interest. Sixteen were not prospectively registered, two contained discussion/conclusions judged to be inconsistent with the registry, and one was rated as having a high RoB. Three studies met the inclusion criteria; heterogeneous interventions and locations for PPT testing prevented synthesis into practice recommendations. The two studies with high confidence in estimated effects had small effect sizes, and one study had confidence intervals that crossed zero for the outcome measures of interest. DISCUSSION: Standardized PPT testing, as a potential measure of centrally mediated pain, could provide clues regarding the mechanisms of manual therapy or help identify/refine research questions.
conclusionHigh-quality RCTs could not be synthesized into strong conclusions secondary to the dissimilarity in research designs. Future research regarding quantitative sensory testing should develop RCTs with high confidence in estimated effects that can be translated into strong recommendations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.