| Objective: To determine whether there is any evidence to support anecdotal claims of positive outcomes in chiropractic intervention for astrooesophageal reflux disorder (GORD) and obtain an estimate of any possible resultant savings in healthcare budgets. Design: Prospective, sequential, longitudinal pilot cohort study using a structured questionnaire to determine pre- and post-treatment outcomes. Setting: Private chiropractic clinic in south-west England. Subjects: Eighty-three consecutive patient presentingto the clinic who confirmed the presence of
GORD of greater than two years’ duration. Intervention: Chiropractic spinal manipulativetherapy and adjunctive soft tissue modalities. Results: Patients showed an improvement in theseverity (P < 1011) and frequency of their symptoms(P < 1012) without any reported adverseevents. Intervention seemed most effective inpatients with endoscopy-negative GORD and leasteffective in patients with confirmed larger (>2 cm)
hiatal herniae, where outcomes failed to reachstatistical significance. Thirty-seven of 83 patientswere able to downgrade their medication (P <107)
suggesting a possible saving of US$963 per patient per annum in healthcare costs. Conclusion: Patients with idiopathic GORD maybenefit in the short and medium term from conservativechiropractic management in terms of symptom
frequency and severity and dependence on palliative pharmacological interventions. This could, in turn, have significant cost savings for
healthcare provision. The pilot study offers scope for a larger controlled trial to investigate efficacy. This abstract is reproduced with the permission of the publisher.
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