Jeff Langmaid reviews a trial of 40 people with sciatica comparing manual therapy alone to manual therapy plus functional magnetic stimulation. The combined treatment showed striking results, suggesting a possible new standard for care, though exact numbers aren't detailed here.
This was a randomized controlled trial. It's one of the strongest study designs that they have in any clinical research. They had 40 adults, MRI confirmed lumbar disc herniation with radiculopathy. And basically they assigned these individuals to two groups. One group was manual therapy plus functional magnetic stimulation. Group 2 was manual therapy alone. Each of these groups, 10 treatment sessions over 3 weeks, and they looked at a few different outcomes kind of before and after. They looked at pain intensity, functional disability, neuropathic nerve pain, nerve sensitivity, and mobility. And these were measured using tools that you probably have heard of many times, which is the Numeric Pain Rating Scale, Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire, the S-LANS, uh, Neuropathic Pain Scale. I hadn't heard of that one. And then of course the good old straight leg raise testing. So really well-designed clinical trial, and the numbers are where things get really interesting.
