McKenzie Lumbar Classification
Bibliographic record
Abstract
STUDY DESIGN: Inter-rater chance-corrected agreement study. OBJECTIVE: The aim was to examine the association between therapists' level of formal precredential McKenzie postgraduate training and agreement on the following McKenzie classification variables for patients with low back pain: main McKenzie syndromes, presence of lateral shift, derangement reducibility, directional preference, and centralization. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Minimal level of McKenzie postgraduate training needed to achieve acceptable agreement of McKenzie classification system is unknown. METHODS: Raters (N = 47) completed multiple sets of 2 independent successive examinations at 3 different stages of McKenzie postgraduate training (levels parts A and B, part C, and part D). Agreement was assessed with κ coefficients and associated 95% confidence intervals. A minimum κ threshold of 0.60 was used as a predetermined criterion for level of agreement acceptable for clinical use. RESULTS: Raters examined 1662 patients (mean age = 51 ± 15; range, 18-91; females, 57%). Data distributions were not even and were highly skewed for all classification variables. No training level studied had acceptable agreement for any McKenzie classification variable. Agreements for all levels of McKenzie postgraduate training were higher than expected by chance for most of the classification variables except parts A and B training level for judging lateral shift and centralization and part D training level for judging reducibility. Agreement between training levels parts A and B, part C, and part D were similar with overlapping 95% confidence intervals. CONCLUSION: Results indicate that level of inter-rater chance-corrected agreement of McKenzie classification system was not acceptable for therapists at any level of formal McKenzie postgraduate training. This finding raises concerns about the clinical utility of the McKenzie classification system at these training levels. Additional studies are needed to assess agreement levels for therapists who receive additional training or experience at the McKenzie credentialed or diploma levels. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 2.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.056 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".