The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Randomised clinical trial of manipulative therapy and physiotherapy for persistent back and neck complaints: results of one year follow up.
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVE: To compare the effectiveness of manipulative therapy, physiotherapy, treatment by the general practitioner, and placebo therapy in patients with persistent non-specific back and neck complaints. DESIGN: Randomised clinical trial. SETTING: Primary health care in the Netherlands. PATIENTS: 256 patients with non-specific back and neck complaints of at least six weeks' duration who had not received physiotherapy or manipulative therapy in the past two years. INTERVENTIONS: At the discretion of the manipulative therapists, physiotherapists, and general practitioners. Physiotherapy consisted of exercises, massage, and physical therapy (heat, electrotherapy, ultrasound, shortwave diathermy). Manipulative therapy consisted of manipulation and mobilisation of the spine. Treatment by general practitioners consisted of drugs (for example, analgesics), advice about posture, home exercises, and (bed)rest. Placebo treatment consisted of detuned shortwave diathermy (10 minutes) and detuned ultrasound (10 minutes). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Changes in severity of the main complaint and limitation of physical functioning measured on 10 point scales by a blinded research assistant and global perceived effect measured on a 6 point scale by the patients. RESULTS: Many patients in the general practitioner and placebo groups received other treatment during follow up. Improvement in the main complaint was larger with manipulative therapy (4.5) than with physiotherapy (3.8) after 12 months' follow up (difference 0.9; 95% confidence interval 0.1 to 1.7). Manipulative therapy also gave larger improvements in physical functioning (difference 0.6; -0.1 to 1.3). The global perceived effect after six and 12 months' follow up was similar for both treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Manipulative therapy and physiotherapy are better than general practitioner and placebo treatment. Furthermore, manipulative therapy is slightly better than physiotherapy after 12 months.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Qaseem, A., Wilt, T. J., McLean, R. M., Forciea, M. A., & for the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians* (2017) · Annals of Internal Medicine · doi:10.7326/m16-2367 · Cited by 3,234
Exercises for mechanical neck disorders
Gross, A., Kay, T. M., Paquin, J.-P., Blanchette, S., Lalonde, P., Christie, T., Dupont, G., Graham, N., Burnie, S. J., Gelley, G., et al. (2015) · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · doi:10.1002/14651858.cd004250.pub5 · Cited by 613
A Cochrane Review of Manipulation and Mobilization for Mechanical Neck Disorders
Gross, A. R., Hoving, J. L., Haines, T. A., Goldsmith, C. H., Kay, T., Aker, P., & Bronfort, G. (2004) · Spine · doi:10.1097/01.brs.0000131218.35875.ed · Cited by 299
Breathing retraining for dysfunctional breathing in asthma: a randomised controlled trial
Thomas, M. (2003) · Thorax · doi:10.1136/thorax.58.2.110 · Cited by 230
(2007) · PubMed · Cited by 184
Metadata
- Authors
- Koes, B. W., Bouter, L. M., van Mameren, H., Essers, A. H., Verstegen, G. M., Hofhuizen, D. M., Houben, J. P., & Knipschild, P. G.
- Venue
- BMJ
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 1992-03-07
- Volume
- 304
- Issue
- 6827
- Pages
- 601-605
- ISSN
- 0007-1447 (ISSN-L)
- 0959-8138
- 1468-5833
- OpenAlex
- W2019192997
- Cited by
- 253
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 12.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Randomised clinical trial of manipulative therapy and physiotherapy for persistent back and neck complaints: results of one year follow up. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1136/bmj.304.6827.601
- The paper
- Koes, B. W., Bouter, L. M., van Mameren, H., Essers, A. H., Verstegen, G. M., Hofhuizen, D. M., Houben, J. P., & Knipschild, P. G. (1992). Randomised clinical trial of manipulative therapy and physiotherapy for persistent back and neck complaints: results of one year follow up. BMJ. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.304.6827.601
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
