A great post today on Chiro.org, visits a recent study that showed a trend in injury prevention to athletes under chiropractic care. The study compares the chiropractic group to a group under the same care and conditions sans chiropractic.
Hoskins and Pollard used two groups of male semi elite Australian Rules football athletes, matched them in several ways and randomly placed them in one of two arms of the study. All received the usual and customary management and medical care. Half also received chiropractic care which consisted of both soft tissue and high velocity spinal manipulation. There research evaluated several outcomes. When chiropractic care was added to conventional management, there was a significant reduction in lower limb strain injuries, time missed as a result of knee injuries, lower low back pain, and there was improvement in health status. “In addition, although not statistically significant, there was a trend towards prevention of hamstring and primary non-contact knee injuries and there were no reported adverse outcomes from the intervention.” The authors do acknowledge the several limitations to their work including the small sample size. The work is nonetheless an important piece and one of the few where the focus is prevention.
Chiropractors have spoken for years about the multiple successes of chiropractic adjustments for athletes. The benefits have ranged from injury recovery to increased athleticism, and proper structural bio-mechanics. What makes this study great is it is looking at the potential ability of injury prevention, and the “trend” was a success when compared to the non-chiropractic group.
If anyone has watched Aussie rules football, you will agree that there is not a more physical, more intense sport out there. Every sporting team, and athlete who wants to participate in their given sport should take notice of this study, and consider chiropractic care in their regimen if they have not already.