| Report from the Research Committee
February 2007
(Drs Bablis, Walker & Pollard)
Introduction
I hope all are well rested after the festive and holiday season.
After a busy few weeks travelling I can now report on the activities of the last 3 months.
Research Projects
We have continued advertisement and recruitment for 2 of the 3 of the RCT’s now. The ADHD project
is rapidly progressing with subjects and independent review by the psychologists. Early results
look promising.
The hypothyroid RCT is progressing at a slower rate. Recruitment in the trial is slow and the
drop out rate has been high. We estimate the completion time for this study to be twice the time
we originally projected unless there is a turnaround in the number of participants completing the
study. The results of those participants that have commenced the study are still too early to draw
any definitive trend.
The main phase of the study will commence recruitment in the next month. We have used the
experience of the pilot study to proof and streamline our procedures for when we commence
the next phase. Peter and I have had extensive discussions about our procedures and report
that we have learned a great deal about the “day to day” running of an RCT within a busy
practice. The summary will act to instruct the person in what their roles / duties /
expectations will be during the running of the study.
Completed Studies
The trigger point study is complete and awaiting a small piece of information from Peter to be
sent to the journal. We will attempt to send this paper to a new medline based journal.
The patient retrospective data paper is currently being prepared. It is in early draft after
analysis of the data set. Some problems have occurred with the lack of completion of some of the
questions in the questionnaire but we should be able to extract a profile of the patients
presenting to Peter’s clinic. Put simply, the profile is about 50% musculoskeletal, 40%
non-musculoskeletal and 10% wellness. This profile is greatly different to all published papers
on chiropractic that estimate chiropractic practice to be a max of about 10% non-musculoskeletal
patients. This paper should find publication as it demonstrates a broader scope of practice of
NET compared with the average chiropractic practice.
On another matter, I have asked Dr Steve Osborne to provide me with a list of certified docs
in Australia as I wish to co-ordinate a new project with all of them, as well as get some
feedback on the case mix in their clinics. This will be done to compare how representative
Peter’s case mix is in his clinic compared with the other docs.
Research Published
As reported earlier we received a challenge to a recent published paper in the form of a letter
to the editor. A strong reply was fashioned as well as a commentary paper to explain some of the
issues raised in the letter. Taken together, the response has strongly rebuked the original letter
and hopefully will open a few eyes in the process. They are included for you information.
Another paper in the background series on the stress response and its relationship to
chiropractic was published in chiropractic & Osteopathy. It is performing well in the
number of “hits” it is attracting.
Conclusion
The last year has taught us much about the process of science form the point of view of data
collection and from the point of view of presenting the data in the journals. NET is beginning
to attract attention from others based on our growing research output. So whilst we once flew
under the radar, we are now coming onto it from time to time. This may be a trying period for
us as those that are not enamored of vitalistic approaches to healthcare begin to take aim.
However, as healthcare pushes into the inevitable pursuit of wellness and health promotion at
the expense of crisis management, the documentation and evidence being amassed by us at the
moment should keep us in good stead to take advantage of the forthcoming change in healthcare
perceptions.
Dr Henry Pollard DC, PhD
Director of Research
ONE Research Foundation
On behalf of the Research Committee
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