User's guide to the Chiropractic Literature-IB: how to use an article about therapy

In the first article in this series, we described a patient who presented to a chiropractic clinic with a complaint of long-standing neck pain.1 The patient had expressed concern surrounding the risks of cervical manipulation. The clinician made a tentative diagnosis of mechanical neck pain. In order to provide the patient with the most appropriate choices of therapy and taking into consideration his concerns about the risks of cervical manipulation, the clinician initiated a literature search to obtain the most recent high-quality information on treatment of chronic mechanical neck pain with spinal manipulation and identified 2 relevant clinical trials.2,3 In the first article of the series, we addressed the validity of the 2 studies. The current article, the second in a proposed 4-part series designed to help chiropractors effectively use the published literature in everyday practice, provides a strategy for interpreting the results. The User's Guides to the Medical Literature has provided much of the material in this series.4