This is something we definately don't try here at C1 Chiropractic Health Centre.
Medicine-assisted Manipulation is defined as manipulation of the spine after any type of anaesthesia or analgesia. The most common form of this is manipulation under anaesthesia (MUA).
In the journal of the North American Spine Society there is a comprehensive review of ‘Chronic low-back pain’ and evidence for and against the numerous methods of managing patients with this condition including MUA.
Currently there are several influential clinical guidelines about this sort of stuff such as the Ontario Workers’ Safety and Insurance Board of Canada’s guidelines and in Europe the European Back Pain Guidelines which are all available online. In the UK the British Medical Research council sponsored the BEAM Trial which has shown “convincingly that both manipulation alone and manipulation followed by exercise provide cost-effective additions to best care (for low-back pain patients) in general practice”
The editors are critical of what they call a supermarket response to low-back care where patients are offered a range of untested treatments (with over 200 different forms of care available in the USA) and even those with the most evidence, such as chiropractic still have questions that must be asked. Every year there appeared to be more treatments available with strong and commercial advocates with generally limited scientific evidence.
However, this review is different with each form of management being tackled by another health care expert, so the review of manipulation under anaesthesia is done by chiropractors.
In this review it demonstrated that there was little evidence supporting or refuting the value of MUA – not a single quality RCT and only a few published cases. The authors conclude that these is insufficient research to make any conclusions and yet the thing still continues – remarkable really
These reviews are available on:
www.science-direct.com/science/journal/15299430
click on Vol.8 Issue 1.
