Improvement in Heart Rate Variability Following Spinal Adjustment: A Case Study in Statistical Methodology for a Single Office Visit
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Statistical analysis is typically applied at the group level. The present study analyzes data during a single office visit as a novel approach providing real-time feedback to the clinician and patient regarding efficacy of an intervention. In this study, heart rate variability (HRV) was analyzed before versus after a chiropractic spinal adjustment. Methods: The patient is an adult female who signed a consent form for the study. HRV was measured twice before a chiropractic adjustment and once afterwards using app-based technology. The three HRV values (two pre and one post) were then statistically analyzed using an online calculator for outliers using Grubbs test. Results: The two pre-adjustment HRV (rMSSD) readings were consistently low: pre 1 = 16.0 milliseconds [ms] and pre 2 = 16.2 ms. The low HRV was an indicator that the patient’s nervous system was not functioning optimally. The patient’s atlas (C1) vertebra was palpated to be slightly out of alignment. These two findings (low HRV and vertebral misalignment) indicated the presence of a chiropractic subluxation (of the atlas vertebra). The subluxation was adjusted and within minutes the HRV increased (improved) to 27.5 ms. This improvement was calculated to be a statistically significant outlier (p < 0.05). Conclusion: This study is an example of how statistical methods can be applied to the level of an individual patient during one office visit to assess neurological effectiveness of a chiropractic adjustment. Since this is a case study, the results may not apply to all patients. Therefore, further studies in other patients, and for longer follow-up times, are reasonable next steps.
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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 | 0.023 | 0.048 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
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".