Spinal manipulation and mobilisation in the treatment of infants, children, and adolescents: a systematic scoping review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Purpose To i) identify and map the available evidence regarding effectiveness and harms of spinal manipulation and mobilisation for infants, children and adolescents with a broad range of conditions; ii) identify and synthesise policies, regulations, position statements and practice guidelines informing their clinical use. Design Systematic scoping review, utilising four electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, CINHAL and Cochrane) and grey literature from root to 4th February 2021. Participants Infants, children and adolescents (birth to < 18 years) with any childhood disorder/condition. Intervention Spinal manipulation and mobilisation Outcome measures Outcomes relating to common childhood conditions were explored. Method Two reviewers (A.P., L.L.) independently screened and selected studies, extracted key findings and assessed methodological quality of included papers using Joanna Briggs Institute Checklist for Systematic Reviews and Research Synthesis, Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklist for Text and Opinion Papers, Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool and International Centre for Allied Health Evidence Guideline Quality Checklist. A descriptive synthesis of reported findings was undertaken using a levels of evidence approach. Results Eighty-seven articles were included. Methodological quality of articles varied. Spinal manipulation and mobilisation are being utilised clinically by a variety of health professionals to manage paediatric populations with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), back/neck pain, breastfeeding difficulties, cerebral palsy (CP), dysfunctional voiding, excessive crying, headaches, infantile colic, kinetic imbalances due to suboccipital strain (KISS), nocturnal enuresis, otitis media, torticollis and plagiocephaly. The descriptive synthesis revealed: no evidence to explicitly support the effectiveness of spinal manipulation or mobilisation for any condition in paediatric populations. Mild transient symptoms were commonly described in randomised controlled trials and on occasion, moderate-to-severe adverse events were reported in systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials and other lower quality studies. There was strong to very strong evidence for ‘no significant effect’ of spinal manipulation for managing asthma (pulmonary function), headache and nocturnal enuresis, and inconclusive or insufficient evidence for all other conditions explored. There is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions regarding spinal mobilisation to treat paediatric populations with any condition. Conclusion Whilst some individual high-quality studies demonstrate positive results for some conditions, our descriptive synthesis of the collective findings does not provide support for spinal manipulation or mobilisation in paediatric populations for any condition. Increased reporting of adverse events is required to determine true risks. Randomised controlled trials examining effectiveness of spinal manipulation and mobilisation in paediatric populations are warranted.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.014 | 0.060 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.011 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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".