Evidence Based Rehab

I'm sure anyone trying to read anything I've written is sure the paper being read was by me. Enjoy your Friday!

Labels: Fun, You Tube

Biomed Central posted today that Howard Hughes Medical Institutes (HHMI) has become the first major US funder to require it's researchers to publish their reports open access. This is a significant step toward open sharing of health care research.

Labels: EBM, Open Access

Our friends over at Evidence in Motion posted in their blog about a gentleman that swears he has invented a machine that automates physical therapy. Called the HYDROT-pt5™, this machine:

..delivers automated alternating Hot, Neutral Zone, Cold, Intermittent Compression, and Directional Massage… back to back, through a single pad automatically.

Wow, isn't that how PT was practiced in 1980 before we realized all it did was make the patient feel better for 1 hour? Here's the machine itself:

The "inventor's" website is totally devoid, obviously, of any literature to back up his claims from a Cleburne Times-Review article that the machine is:

...capable of speeding up healing and reducing pain in less than a third of the time it normally takes...

The website does have a "Peer Review" link. However, this presents us only with testimonials. A few have "Dr." before their names, so this must warrant the "Peer" aspect of Peer Review.

As Physical Therapists, we must watch our backyards for snake oil salesman like this and educate the public and the medical community as to what real physical therapy is, and maybe more important, what it is not.

Labels: Fraud, physical therapy, treatment

Evidence Based Medicine is dependent on us keeping up to date with current evidence. But how many of us actually have time to search our, read, and incorporate this evidence?

That is why it is very important to find ways to get preprocessed literature, that is relevant to your practice, sent to you. There are resources for this, and I'll take the time to list the one's I know. Please leave comments with other sources you use.

• Evidence in Motion - Great site for discussion, current literature, and Con. Ed.
• Rehab Edge - A discussion forum with views and treatment ideas from all over the world.
• Cochrane - Literature reviews of specific pathologies
• InfoPoems - POEMS are Patient Oriented Evidence that Matters.
• Hooked On Evidence - Our own association has this great tool for us summarizing benefits of select treatments.
  

Labels: EBM, Evidence, physical therapy