The journal BMJ Open has published our paper “Manual therapy for unsettled, distressed and excessively crying infants: a systematic review and meta-analyses”. This large piece of work took upward of a year to complete, and required our small charity to take on two extra team members: one professional systematic reviewer, and one osteopath who very generously gave up her free time to help. You can read about the background behind this research including why and how it came about, and the protocol we published before conducting the review.
Our study builds on previous systematic reviews, and suggests that manual therapies may reduce crying time by a little over an hour per day for infants who are unsettled but otherwise healthy. Plenty remains unanswered. Why, for instance, do well-supported parents seek out manual therapists, and what qualities of the parent-child-therapist relationship might influence outcomes?
Safety is paramount in any clinical encounter, and even more so when consent is granted by a guardian. NCOR continue to work with individual osteopaths, educational institutions, and larger clinics throughout the UK to ensure that outcomes and experiences are recorded for analysis. To find out more about this work and to get involved, please see our Patient Reported Outcome Measures project.
The full study is available at http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/8/1/e019040
A systematic review requires significant resources, and we raised funds by inviting contributions from the international community. NCOR would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitute to all those who donated. If you would like to help our other projects, please consider donating to NCOR. Even a small amount such as £2 per month can make a significant difference.