Development of standardized osteopathic manipulative treatment tracking forms recording pain and functional outcomes to facilitate osteopathic research

Abstract

Objectives

Osteopathic physicians are well positioned to provide needed non-pharmacological pain management using osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) in the holistic treatment of pain. Reflecting on years of often ineffective and potentially harmful traditional pharmacological management of musculoskeletal (MSK) pain, OMT as an alternative method is underutilized and under-recognized option. There is a need for standardized data collection to support the use of OMT as an evidence-based complement to pain management. This project developed efficient and standardized intake and follow-up forms to assess short and long term OMT treatment outcomes.

Methods

Addressing the need, standardized, mineable research instruments that capture the specifics of patient presentation, clinical findings, treatment modalities including outcomes for OMT pain management were created. Including background health information, the intake includes active medications, quantitating analgesics, pain location charts, pain severity/location (ICD) 10th revision diagnostic codes (ICD-11 codes unavailable in US), functional capacity score/location, and OMT implemented/body location. Follow-up form documents prior treatments outcome, pain, and functional status outcome scores, quantitates analgesics.

Results

Forms are open access for general use, without restriction, tracking effectiveness of OMT for pain management and encourages development of an international database.

Conclusion

Developing these OMT intake and follow-up forms creates clinically useable and research mineable instruments for documentation of OMT procedures and outcomes in the overall treatment of MSK pain. OMT will gain better worldwide recognition as a validated alternative to pharmacologic treatments.