Chiropractic Care for Patients Aged 55 Years and Older: Report from a Practice‐Based Research Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To characterize patients aged 55 years and older and features of chiropractic care provided to them. DESIGN: Observational, practice-based research study. SETTING: Chiropractic offices in the United States and Canada, 1997-1998. PARTICIPANTS: Chiropractors in 96 practices in 32 states and two Canadian provinces collected data on 805 eligible patients aged 55 years and older during a 12-week study period. MEASUREMENTS: In addition to questionnaires on practice characteristics, patient demographics, chief complaints, and health habits, two standardized instruments were administered: for general health status, the Medical Outcomes Study 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12); and for disability related to chronic pain, the Pain Disability Index (PDI). RESULTS: Of 805 study patients, 60.1% were women and' 94.7% were white. Overweight patients comprised 38.6% and obese 20.6% (n = 656) of the total; 9.7% of patients were hypertensive (n = 590). Smoking was reported by 12.7% and 50.2% reported regular exercise. The Physical Component Summary scores of the SF-12 seemed somewhat lower than population norms, whereas the Mental Component Summary scores differed very little from norms. Chief complaints were predominantly pain-related (72.3%), most commonly back pain (32.9%). The PDI mean baseline score for chronic patients was 16.3 (scale, 0-70), and 40.6% of study patients reported using at least one pain medication (prescription or nonprescription) more than three times per week. More than half of complaints (54.9%) had onsets more than 6 weeks before the baseline visit. For 66.6% of subjects, a chiropractor was the only provider for their current complaint. In addition to manipulation, most common features of care were recommendations on exercise (41.0%), heat or cold applications (40.8%), and food supplements (24.5%). At 4 weeks, 19.6% were discharged, 58.8% continued treatment, and 20.1% had discontinued care (self-discharged). For these three groups, those with higher PDI mean baseline scores showed more change at 4 weeks. For patients who were discharged by the doctor, the proportion of reported pain medication use decreased 7.3% from baseline to 4 weeks, increased for patients who discontinued care, and remained about the same for those continuing care. CONCLUSIONS: Further investigation of the PDI and a decrease in pain medication use as outcome measures seems warranted. The descriptive information in this study may assist providers of care to older adults to better understand their patients' use of chiropractic care.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".