Comparative Effectiveness and Safety of Concomitant Treatment with Chuna Manual Therapy and Usual Care for Whiplash Injuries: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.

Objectives: We aimed to compare the effectiveness and safety of Chuna manual therapy combined with usual care to those of usual care alone for treating whiplash injuries.

Design: A two-arm, parallel, assessor-blinded, multicenter pragmatic randomized clinical trial.

Setting: Three hospitals in Korea.

Participants: Overall, 132 participants between 19 and 70 years of age, involved in traffic accidents and treated at three hospitals in Korea, >2 but <13 weeks prior to enrollment, with neck pain consistent with whiplash-associated disorder grades I and II and a numeric rating scale score ≥5 were included.

Interventions: Participants were equally and randomly allocated to the Chuna manual therapy and usual care ( = 66) or usual care ( = 66) groups and underwent corresponding treatment for three weeks.

Primary And Secondary Outcome Measures: The primary outcome was the number of days to achieve a 50% pain reduction. Secondary outcomes included areas under the 50% numeric rating scale reduction curve: pain, disability, quality of life, and safety.

Results: The Chuna manual therapy + usual care group (23.31 ± 21.36 days; = 0.01) required significantly fewer days to achieve 50% pain reduction compared to the usual care group (50.41 ± 48.32 days; = 0.01). Regarding pain severity, functional index, and quality of life index, Chuna manual therapy and usual care were more effective than usual care alone. Safety was acceptable in both groups.

Conclusions: In patients with subacute whiplash injury, Chuna manual therapy showed a rapid rate of recovery, high effectiveness, and safety.