Questions from an Osteopathic Student

[MomRNtoDO]

Hi everyone. I am a 2nd year Osteopathic Medical Student. I have about had it with the posts on the osteopathic thread from students that hate OMM and think it is made up. I have a superficial knowledge of P.T. therapies, but I wanted to get some input, to maybe share with my uninformed colleagues, of research based treatment modalities.

I had a chat with a PTA friend the other night, and she and I spoke about Strain/Counterstrain, MFR and Muscle Energy.

I am curious what other modalities you use frequently, and of the ones I mentioned above, how often you use them and the evidence you use to back up their use. I know they work and thought if it could be shown that there is evidence based practice out there, it might defuse some of the angry anti-OMM comments out there. If I am wrong in posting here, forgive me, but I believe you are our closest allies in physical medicine.

Thanks in advance for your input!

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[MIDPT2012]

Have you done a search of the literature databases such as pubmed, cochrane or cinahl? Probably the best way to find evidence to support your claims. Cochrane is great since they are systematic reviews of other studies and contain meta-analysis of a large number of studies.

I wish I could help more - but I'm a first year student so we haven't gotten too sophisticated yet in therapies for treatment - we're still in evaluation in our program! I do know that my school is very supportive of the therapies you described and even offer an OMPT certificate.

 

[facetguy]

Hi everyone. I am a 2nd year Osteopathic Medical Student. I have about had it with the posts on the osteopathic thread from students that hate OMM and think it is made up. I have a superficial knowledge of P.T. therapies, but I wanted to get some input, to maybe share with my uninformed colleagues, of research based treatment modalities.

I am curious what other modalities you use frequently, and of the ones I mentioned above, how often you use them and the evidence you use to back up their use. I know they work and thought if it could be shown that there is evidence based practice out there, it might defuse some of the angry anti-OMM comments out there. If I am wrong in posting here, forgive me, but I believe you are our closest allies in physical medicine.

Thanks in advance for your input!

I understand, but I also think you are wasting your energy. Focus instead on becoming the best you can be.

I must ask, though, don't your OMM professors discuss evidence where available? You are almost through your second year, and you have no idea what types of studies have been done?

 

[jesspt]

I echo facet's surprise that your professors haven't discussed relevant evidence when instructing you in these portions of OMM. If they're not doing this, you should be asking them to.

Having said that, I would tend to agree with your colleagues that there is minimal to no evidence that S/CS, or MFR are efficacious or positively impact patient outcome. There is some very limited evidence that positively regards Muscle Energy Techniques, but that treatmetn approach has significant limtations regarding reliability and validity of the manual assesment which preceeds treatment.

The most widely researched manual treatment technique is spinal manipulation, which, if you have been instructed in it yet, will be becoming part of your coursework soon. There is some fairly strong research demonstrating benefits of spinal manipulation, particularly with aptients with acute LBP.