Outcomes After Chiropractic Spinal Manipulative Therapy for Patients With Lumbar Disc Herniation and Radiculopathy

In a study that was approved nine years ago (EK-22/2009) we could show (i) that spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is a very effective and safe treatment for acute and chronic lumbar disc herniation (LDH); (ii) that SMT is as effective and less expensive than lumbar nerve root injections and (iii) that the recurrence rate up to one year was very low in acute and in chronic LDH patients. However, the long-term outcome of this conservatively treated LDH patients is unknown. Thus, the objective of this amendment is to investigate the proportion of long-term recurrences in these patients who were treated with SMT for their LDH and to compare these results with already existing data from other treatments, e.g. surgery. This is important information to know whether this conservative method is a sustainable approach for treating LDH.