Big Press for JOSPT? Cervical Manip Causes Stoke?

NYT Well Blog Has Trouble Getting The Facts Right

Two particular articles in the New York Times this week drew my attention.  The first was a post on the usually strong Well Blog about the proliferation of Kinesio tape all over the women's volleyball tournament in Beijing.  In one match that I watched, all four player were wearing the tape!  Well, not so long ago, JOSPT, which is the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy included a radomized controlled trial investigating the effectiveness of the tape.  The Well Blog jumped all over the results section of the study stating,

"Notably, the study participants who received the real therapeutic tape treatment reported an immediate improvement in pain."

When one views the actual study, the conclusions read,

"Utilization of KT for decreasing pain intensity or disability for young patients with suspected shoulder tendonitis/impingement is not supported."

The researchers had only found short term improvements in shoulder abduction ROM on the order of about 16 degrees.  Is it surprising the Well Blog put the wrong spin on the data?  Not really.  They even got the name of JOSPT wrong!  I expect better from one of my favorite blogs. 

Here is a great post on the Kinesio tape.

Risks of Cervical Manipulation:  236-Word Sprint Format.

Ahanad O'Connor attempts to deal with the complex issue of cervical spine risks, particular the association of cervical manipulation and stroke in a NYT Science Times piece.  Thankfully, only chiropractors were mentioned in this bit, but I kind of feel badly for them as this article has a strong anti-manip bias.  236 words is not nearly enough to even skim the surface of this area of considerable complexity and uncertainty.  O'Connor chooses statistics to put down on paper thay belie his bias on this subject:  "It estimated an incidence of 1.3 cases for every 100,000 people under 45 receiving neck adjustments."

While he does attempt to bring uncertainty to the issue in a balanced concluding paragraph, the image on the left of the page sets the tone: crack your neck and your dead!

For the record, cervical spine manipulation is a safe intervention, perhaps with an extremely small, if not insignificant, component of risk that might be unpredictable.