Osteopathic Evaluation on Patients With Non-specific Back Pain: An Inter-examiner Reliability Study

Back pain is one of the leading causes of consultation for rehabilitation. Establishing a diagnosis in the initial patient assessment is essential to choosing a specific treatment plan for that patient, regardless of the type of therapy the patient chooses to pursue. Evidence based medicine is the current gold standard for most manual-therapy professions, and there has been a great deal of research performed in an attempt to give credibility to the one tool that all manual therapy professions share in common: palpation. Few studies have been able to demonstrate an acceptable rate of inter-examiner reliability for palpation. This study will combine a global testing regime, consensus training for evaluators, and access to history of injury with symptomatic subjects to verify the inter-examiner reliability of an osteopathic evaluation on patients with chronic, non-specific low back pain.

Inclusion criteria

• Men and women ages 18-60
• Must have a history of non-specific back pain (not due to any known pathology eg. disc herniation or disc degenerative disease) that is currently not irritated and has not been, in the past 8 weeks
• Must be available for 3 consecutive hour

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with a known cause for their back pain
• Patients who have had a flare up of symptoms within the last 8 weeks
• Patients who are currently undergoing any rehabilitation or who have received manual treatment in the last 8 weeks.
• Patients who are taking daily medications for pain
• Pregnant women
• Major medical conditions: fractures, degenerative arthritis, inflammatory disorders, ankylosing spondylitis, multiple sclerosis, cancer, paralysis stroke or recent concussion history
• Any other conditions that would prevent the participant from completing the evaluation