The latest medical research on Osteopathy

Osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) is used to treat chronic pain conditions. However, few guidelines focusing on chronic pain management include recommendations for OMT.

To evaluate previous literature on the use of OMT for improving chronic pain.

A literature search was conducted on MEDLINE/PubMed and ScienceDirect on August 26-27, 2019, using the terms "osteopathic," "chronic," and "pain," yielding a total of 312 MEDLINE/PubMed articles and 515 ScienceDirect articles. Eligibility criteria required that studies investigate pain, functional status, or medication usage through an experimental design, focusing on human subjects with chronic pain who had various forms of OMT administered by osteopathically trained individuals in which the comparator group received no intervention, a sham or placebo, or conventional care. Three authors independently performed literature searches and methodically settled disagreements over article selection.

In the 22 articles included in our study that examined OMT use in chronic pain conditions, we evaluated primary outcomes of pain (22; 100%) and functional status (20; 90.9%), and the secondary outcome of medication usage (3; 13.6%). The majority of articles showed that OMT resulted in a significant decrease in pain levels as compared to baseline pain levels or the control group (20; 90.9%) and that OMT resulted in an improvement in functional status (17; 77.3%). In articles that did not find a significant difference in pain (2; 9.1%) or functional status (3; 13.6%), there were overall outcomes improvements noted. All articles that investigated medication usage (3; 13.6%) showed that OMT was effective in decreasing patients' medication usage. Our study was limited by its small sample size and multimodal comparator group exclusion.

OMT provides an evidence-based management option to reduce pain levels, improve functional status, and decrease medication usage in chronic pain conditions, especially low back pain (LBP). Pain management guidelines should include OMT as a resource to alleviate chronic pain.

Despite the documented effectiveness of high-velocity, low-amplitude (HVLA) treatment of the cervical spine, concerns about patient safety potentially limit didactic instruction and use in clinical practice. Understanding how cervical HVLA is taught and employed is of interest to osteopathic educators and clinicians.

To characterize the perspectives of osteopathic manipulative medicine/osteopathic principles and practices (OMM/OPP) departments within colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs) in the US regarding patterns of teaching and practice of HVLA treatment of the cervical spine.

A questionnaire was distributed on April 11, 2019 in paper format to OMM/OPP department chairs or designated faculty member attendees at the Educational Council on Osteopathic Principles biannual meeting. If the department chair was not available, the survey was provided to the faculty member designated to represent the Chair of the institution at ECOP. All respondents in this category returned the survey in paper before they left the meeting. The OMM/OPP department chairs who did not attend or send representatives to the ECOP meeting were sent the survey by email on April 11, 2019 and given three opportunities over 6 weeks at 2-week intervals to reply to this voluntary online survey. The survey was given or sent to a total of 51 OMM/OPP department chairs or representatives. Six questions elicited demographic information pertaining to status, age, gender, ethnicity, board-certified specialty, and COM affiliation. Nine questions examined perspectives related to the instruction of cervical HVLA manipulation and treatment.

Of the 51 OMM/OPP department chairs surveyed, 38 (74.5%) responded, 32 to the paper survey at the ECOP meeting and six to the digital survey. Respondents were primarily dual Board-certified in Family Medicine and Neuromuscular Medicine (55.3%). At over 90% (35) of the COMs for which department chairs responded to the survey, cervical HVLA instruction occurs in the curriculum primarily during program years 1 and 2. Instruction in cervical HVLA to the 2nd through 7th cervical vertebral levels occurred in 97% (37), while 11% (4) of the COMs excluded the occipital-atlanto (OA) and atlanto-axial (AA) joints. A high percentage (81.6%; 31) of the OMM/OPP department chairs or representatives reported employing cervical HVLA techniques within their practice. Among the respondents, 40.5% (15) reported that 0-25% of their school's medical school class could perform cervical HVLA competently upon graduation, whereas 27% (10) said that 51-75% of their class could perform cervical HVLA.

A majority of COMs provide education in their curricula related to cervical HVLA primarily in the first 2 years of medical education. However, instruction often excludes cervical HVLA to the upper regions of the cervical spine. At COMs where HVLA to the cervical spine is not taught, that decision is because the techniques are thought to be too difficult and the attendant medicolegal risk perceived to be too high. OMM/OPP department chairs expressed confidence in only a small proportion of their graduates having the ability to competently apply HVLA to the cervical spine immediately after completing their predoctoral medical training.

Undergraduate student interest in becoming a physician continues to rise, but so too does the difficulty of earning acceptance to medical school. In this competitive environment, little is known about premedical students' knowledge of their medical school options. Moreover, as undergraduate students' emotional health continues to decline, little is known about whether premedical students experience or are at increased risk for the burnout symptoms reported by medical students and other physicians in training.

To examine premedical undergraduate students' knowledge of osteopathic medicine, assess how they learned of osteopathic medicine, and collect information about any reported feelings of burnout.

In this institutional review board-approved study, we electronically distributed an anonymous survey to 342 premedical undergraduate students at a midsize, public research undergraduate institution. The survey included 56 questions. Students were surveyed on their preference of medical schools, knowledge of osteopathic medicine, and experience with burnout via the Maslach Burnout Inventory which measures exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy. Of those who completed the survey, only those who confirmed that they currently considered themselves to be premedical students were included in our analysis. A 2×2 factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was applied to assess main and interaction effects amongst respondents who preferred osteopathic or allopathic programs, whether they learned of osteopathic medicine programs by their own research, and their scores on the 3 measures of the Maslach Burnout Inventory: exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy. Bivariate and factorial analyses were completed using SPSS v26 software (IBM). All tests were 2-tailed and used a .05 standard P value.

Of 342 students to whom the survey was sent, 160 (46.8%) responded, and only 92 (26.9%) considered themselves premedical students. Of the 160 students analyzed in our study, 80 (50%) reported first learning of osteopathic medicine through their own research. A 2×2 factorial ANOVA revealed a significant interaction effect for cynicism in respondents who reported learning of osteopathic medicine programs on their own. Conversely, when respondents reported learning of osteopathic medicine programs from another source, they also reported significantly lower cynicism (F[1,1]5.23, P=.03) and exhaustion (F[1,13] 5.79, P=.02) scores. Of the 92 respondents, only 2 students (2.2%) answered all questions regarding general osteopathic medical knowledge correctly.

The results of this study suggest that among premedical students, knowledge of osteopathic medicine may be incomplete and may be impeding medical school applications. Furthermore, respondents who reported interest in osteopathic medical schools and learned of this option through their own research seemed to experience greater burnout. Based on these findings, increased outreach and education have the potential to not only better inform students of the osteopathic profession, but also to reduce burnout.

While recent streamlining of the graduate medical education process signals an important change from the traditional dichotomy between doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs) and US-trained doctors of medicine (USMDs), this new uniformity does not continue into the process for licensure, including state medical licensing verification of training (VOT) forms for DOs, MDs, and foreign medical graduates (FMGs). Wide variability remains.

To document the differences in the performance metrics program that directors are required to disclose to state medical licensing boards for DOs and FMGs compared with USMDs.

VOT forms were collected from all osteopathic and allopathic licensing boards for all US states, Washington DC, and US territories. The authors then reviewed VOT forms for questions pertaining to trainee performance only in states where VOT forms differed for DOs, USMDs, and FMGs. Licensing board questions were categorized as relating to disciplinary action, documents placed on file, resident actions, and nondisciplinary actions by the program.

Fifty-six states and territories were included in the study (50 US states; Washington, DC; and 5 US territories). Most states and territories (46; 82.1%) used the same VOT form for DOs and USMDs. All states and territories except New York used the same form for FMGs and USMDs (55; 98.2%). Of the 14 states with an osteopathic board, Nevada used Federation Credentials Verification Service (FCVS) for DOs only, and 8 states used a unique osteopathic VOT form. Of these 8 osteopathic boards, 3 VOT forms did not ask any questions regarding resident performance during training. Of the remaining 5 forms, all asked about disciplinary actions. Ten states and 1 territory (US Virgin Islands) required the FCVS for both USMDs and FMGs, but not for DOs, while New York required FCVS only for FMGs. Nevada required FCVS only for DOs.

Although VOT requirements for FMGs and USMDs were mostly the same within states, performance metric question sets varied greatly from state to state and within states for osteopathic vs allopathic licensing boards. Implementation of a standardized VOT form for all applicants that includes academic performance metrics may help ensure that medical licensure is granted to all physicians who demonstrate academic competency during training, regardless of their degree.