Answer to the letter to the editor of J. Hebert et al. concerning 'Hancock MJ, Maher CG, Latimer J, Herbert RD, McAuley JH (2008) Independent evaluation of a clinical prediction rule for spinal manipulative therapy: a randomised controlled trial. Epub ahead of publication

摘要

The primary concern of the letter to editor from Drs Hebert and Perle revolves around the fact that in our trial [4] the spinal manipulative therapy was delivered in a manner that was at the discretion of the therapists. In our trial, most patients received low velocity techniques while in the original trial by Childs et al. [2] all therapists were required to use the same single high velocity technique. We see this as strength of the analysis, not a weakness, because the aim of our analysis was to see if the clinical prediction rule developed by Childs and colleagues [2] would generalize to other forms of spinal manipulative therapy selected by highly skilled and experienced clinicians.