Collaborative Relationships

Spinal manipulation is a traditional treatment procedure used by chiropractors and other professionals, largely for painful back and neck complaints. A collaborative study with The University of Iowa will identify characteristics of low back pain patients who respond clinically to spinal manipulation. This study will explore pre- and post-treatment changes in selected biomechanical and physiological measurements on patients after a regimen of spinal manipulation, and measure the varying effects of external spinal manipulation loads applied to patients undergoing spinal manipulation treatment. In order to effectively assess the efficacy of chiropractic for various conditions among patients, PCCR has developed a registry and treatment project to systematically gather information on patient and procedural characteristics related to outcomes of care. PCCR has partnered with community-based medical physicians and the Departments of Internal Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at The University of Iowa to conduct a comparative chiropractic/medical care study on back pain in an aging population. The resulting biomechanical measurements will be utilized to develop hypotheses on how low back pain and manipulative loads affect muscle and joint physiology, which will be applied to the basic and clinical sciences knowledge base in the area of spinal care research. An investigation is being made on the effect of muscle history in the cervical vertebral column to determine if it impacts both cervical posture and intersegmental motion to examine changes in paraspinal spindle sensitivity.

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