DCs Present at Primary Care Research Meeting

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- Four chiropractic clinical researchers presented original data at the annual conference held by the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) Nov. 10-13. This year's annual meeting was attended by 280 members. The NAPCRG, as the name suggests, is a primary care group that has been networking to build research capability in family practice settings for more than 20 years.

Gert Bronfort, DC, a Danish clinical researcher working at Northwestern College of Chiropractic in Minnesota, was the first chiropractor to present at a NAPCRG meeting back in 1989. Consequently, he was invited to organize a session on low back pain for this year's meeting. He in turn invited some of his research colleagues:

• Joanne Nyiendo, PhD, Western States Chiropractic College, Oregon, spoke on practice activities and patient outcomes comparing medical and chiropractic practice patterns.

   

• William Meeker, DC, MPH, Palmer West, California, gave preliminary results from his large scale trial comparing conservative medical treatment regimens for acute industrial injuries to the lower back.

   

• John Triano, MA, DC, former professor and director of the Joint Ergonomics and Research Laboratory at National College, and now with the Texas Back Institute, presented results from a clinical trial on benefits from spinal manipulative therapy versus back education programs.

   

• Dr. Bronfort offered the preliminary results from his trial on exercise combined with spinal manipulation therapy or NSAID (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory) therapy in the treatment of chronic low back pain.

Highly interesting discussions followed the presentations, moderated by well-known low back researcher Daniel Cherkin, PhD.

• Jeff Borkan, MD, PhD, from Israel, presented some interesting findings from a study of low back patients whose symptoms differed from their physicians' biomedically dominated classifications of pain, leading to a new classification system.

   

• Peter Curtis, MD, presented his "black box" of back pain analogy, referring to the diagnostic uncertainty and unproven treatment challenge.

   

• Janet Street, ARNP, gave results from a controlled trial headed by Dan Cherkin, PhD, examining the question, "Can an educational session with a primary care nurse improve outcomes of care for low back pain?"

   

• Timothy S. Carey, MD, MPH, presented results from his cohort study to assess baseline differences and outcomes of patients presenting to different types of providers, medical as well as chiropractors. Two hundred and eight practitioners and 1,675 patients were included in the study. Baseline and follow-up results of three months were presented.

It was obvious that this interdisciplinary group of primary medical care providers is faced with many of the same problems as the chiropractic research community. In spite of the development of research networks in general practice, there still exists an insufficient critical mass of researchers and very difficult access to federal funding.

Toronto '94

The 1994 NAPCRG meeting is scheduled for the fall in Toronto, Canada, and will continue in the tradition of promoting the growth of primary care research in a friendly and constructive forum. The objectives for the conference will be to develop contacts between researchers, to connect and establish links between various researchers in the area of primary care, and to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration in the development of research projects.

There is no doubt that chiropractic researchers can benefit from participating in the activities of this organization.