Clinical indicators for recommending continued care to patients with neck pain in chiropractic practice: a cohort study - Chiropractic & Manual Therapies

Our findings indicate that clinical indicators for recommending continued care to patients with neck pain are different from those used for recommending MC to patients with low back pain. Thus, it seems appropriate that the severity and persistence of a complaint are related to an approach that involves recommending continued care. Overall, the information provided by the indicators allowed continued care to be distinguished from not continued care with a moderate degree of accuracy (AUC = 0.76). At baseline, we observed some differences in characteristics of patients with continued care planned compared to patients with no continued care planned. Clinical implicationsIn patients with neck pain, a long duration of pain was a strong clinical indicator for the chiropractor to recommend continued care.