• Cramer GD
• McGregor M
• Triano JJ
• Emde JW

• Chiropractic Clinics
• Feasibility Studies
• Open Access Document
• Practice Patterns, Physicians'
• Research Design

The potential of the physician to make clinical inference from experimental results depends upon whether the test conditions generally apply to the average practice setting. This report compares the characteristics of the patient pool of a chiropractic teaching clinic with reports from other teaching clinics and general practice. Differences between participants and non-participants of a feasibility study for randomized controlled clinical trials (RCT) which might affect the interpretation of future RCT results were also investigated. Distribution of the chief complaints was similar to data from both teaching and private practice settings. The age, gender and chronicity of symptoms for patients in the present study were much the same as general practice. In contrast, reports from other teaching clinics revealed a profile of significantly younger patients with more acute onset complaints than either private practice or this study. The number of treatments administered per case to reach clinical resolution were fewer than in previously reported studies from private practice. Generalizations to the averge practice are quite strong.

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