Manual therapy for non-radicular cervical spine related impairments: establishing a 'Trustworthy' living systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objectives: To establish a 'trustworthy' living systematic review (SR) with a meta-analysis of manual therapy for treating non-radicular cervical impairments.

Design: SR with meta-analysis.

Literature Search: Articles published between January 2010 and September 2022 were included from: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL); CINAHL; MEDLINE; PubMed; PEDro, and ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health.

Methods: This SR included English-language randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of manual therapy involving adults used to treat non-radicular cervical impairments. The primary outcomes were pain and region-specific outcome measures. Cervicogenic headaches and whiplash were excluded to improve homogeneity. Two reviewers independently assessed RCTs. The prospective plan was to synthesize results with high confidence in estimated effects using GRADE.

Results: Thirty-five RCTs were screened for registration status. Twenty-eight were not registered or registered prospectively. In 5 studies, the discussion and conclusion did not match the registry, or this could not be determined. One study did not meet the external validity criterion, and another was rated as having a high risk of bias. One study met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, so practice recommendations could not be made. The remaining study did not identify any clinically meaningful group differences.

Discussion: Only one prospectively registered RCT met this SR's strict, high-quality standards. The single identified paper provides initial high-quality evidence on this topic.

Conclusion: This SR establishes a foundation of trustworthiness and can be used to generate research agendas to determine the potential clinical utility of manual therapy directed at the cervical spine for non-radicular cervical complaints.