Manual Therapy, Physical Therapy, or Care by Primary Care Doctors for Patients with Neck Pain

Manual Therapy, Physical Therapy, or Continued Care by a General Practitioner for Patients with Neck Pain: A Randomized, Controlled Trial
Jan Lucas Hoving, Bart W. Koes, Henrica C.W. de Vet, Danielle A.W.M. van der Windt, Willem J.J. Assendelft, Henk van Mameren, Walter L.J.M. Devillé, Jan J.M. Pool, Rob J.P.M Scholten, and Lex M. Bouter
Ann Intern Med May 21, 2002 136:713-722

In the manual therapy group, 68.3% of patients felt “much improved” or “completely recovered” compared with 50.8% of patients in the physical therapy group and 35.9% of doctor-treated patients. The differences between manual therapy and either physical therapy or treatment by a doctor were large enough to prove that there were true differences between the groups. The results suggested that physical therapy might also be better than treatment by a doctor, but the study was too small to prove this.