PHOENIX, AZ -- Dr. Arlan Fuhr, president of the National Institute of Chiropractic Research (NICR), announced that the NICR has awarded a research grant to the Institute of Spine and Biomedical Research (ISBR), a non-profit research institute associated with the Texas Back Institute (TBI) in Plano, Texas. This joint project will be a continuation of the cervical spine study that NICR has been conducting for the last year with Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
The principle investigators are:
- John Triano, DC, MA, staff physician at the Texas Back Institute, a clinical scientist at the TBI Research Foundation, and a member of the ISBR board of advisors. Dr. Triano was one of two chiropractic members of the panel that developed the federal guidelines on acute low back pain.
- Marion McGregor, DC, MS, associate professor at National College of Chiropractic.
Drs. Triano and McGregor will work in conjunction with NICR's Research Director Paul Osterbauer, DC, MPH, who will relocate to Dallas to serve as project manager.
The patient data will be collected at the Texas Back Institute, which is housed, along with ISBR, in the new facility built by Presbyterian Hospital in Plano. The engineering analysis will be performed in Phoenix, with ISBR providing the necessary administration and technical support.
The cervical spine study should take about two years to complete. In the first year, the researchers will study the effectiveness of discriminating among different types of neck problems. Contingent on funding, the second year will be dedicated to a comparison trial between two different chiropractic techniques, or a more costly randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of two chiropractic techniques, versus sham treatments.
Of the project's $177,000 in funding, $75,000 was made possible by a matching grant from the Foundation for the Advancement of Chiropractic Education (FACE) and its chairman Dr. William Harris. Over $100,000 was donated by NICR's membership and corporate sponsors.
NICR President Dr. Fuhr assessed what he hopes will be the significance of the research: "In light of the recent practice guidelines released by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) endorsing spinal manipulation as the preferred means of treatment for acute low back pain, this project is especially important, as it hopes to provide the same convincing data for problems affecting the cervical spine."
