Journal Of Chiropractic Case Reports
ABSTRACT: Objective: To provide a global review of all case reports published chiropractic peer-reviewed journals. To establish a profile of chiropractic research as reflected by single subject studies, identify trends, strengths,weaknesses and future research needs.
Data Sources: A search of the CHIROLARS online chiropractic database was performed. In view of the fact that this database contains all issues from all peer-reviewed chiropractic journals,no other index source was necessary. All case reports are identified in CHIROLARS by the check tag “case report” making it necessary only to combine this term with a specific journal title to retrieve all case reports for that chiropractic peer-reviewed journal. All 14 peer-reviewed chiropractic research journals were included in this review.
Study Selection: All studies that were identified as case reports per the definition established by the National Library of Medicine were included in this study. Data Synthesis: A total of 318 case reports have been published in chiropractic peer-reviewed journals. Each of these reports were critically reviewed, classified and categorized along several dimensions, e.g. age of patient, type of conditions treated, types of therapeutic intervention employed. The journals themselves were assessed relative to multiple parameters, e.g. number of case reports by journal,number of case reports by year.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates a trend toward an increase in the number of published case reports. However it is clear that, for the second largest health physician group, the total number of case reports is small. Many conditions that have been purported to respond to chiropractic care (e.g. migraine, hypertension, colic, vertigo) are poorly represented or documented in case reports. Finally, many therapeutic interventions used by chiropractors are also not well represented in the published case reports to date. This review identified areas that need to be addressed by future single subject and other forms of chiropractic research.