OMT and Respiratory Illness

Respiratory illness is a common complaint seen routinely in primary care. Illness is a common cause of reduced productivity, general discomfort and missed time from work. Osteopathic manual therapy (OMT) and the lymphatic pump is used frequently among osteopathic physicians to treat patients with infections. Many osteopathic physicians have anecdotal reports of patient having reduced respiratory symptoms reported in follow up care from patients. OMT is a useful, low-cost treatment and can help reduce duration of illness symptoms, improve patients' comfort and accelerate their return to their productive lives.

There have been few studies on an outpatient level quantifying this improvement. Previous research in other models have showed benefits of OMT to help reduce illness. Studies in a rat model have shown reduced S. pneumonia bacterial load in the lung after lymphatic pump. Additional rat studies demonstrated improved benefit with lymphatic pump in addition to antibiotic treatment. In a dog model, lymphatic pump has been shown to increase cytokine flow to the thoracic duct. In humans, OMT has shown to improve secretory immunoglobulin A levels in stressed student population. In the hospital setting, OMT for patients with pneumonia has shown to decrease hospital length of stay 5. OMT has been a known useful additional treatment to pneumonia, however there are few prospective studies on treatment of pneumonia and respiratory illness in the outpatient setting.

This study is designed to support evidence that patients with a recent diagnosis of upper respiratory illness, sinusitis, bronchitis, or pneumonia who receive lymphatic pump OMT experience reduced severity and length of symptoms. After informed consent, patients of ages 65-100 years of age who are diagnosed with a respiratory illness will be randomized to either standard care without OMT, or standard care plus OMT. Patients will be provided an electronic survey to quantify symptoms of cough, congestion, and malaise on both the day of illness diagnosis followed by the same survey 5 days later. Survey results comparing day of diagnosis and 5 days later will be recorded in a secure database and analyzed with appropriate statistical testing. The goal of this study is to show how the lymphatic pump can reduce both severity and duration of symptoms related to respiratory illness.