Effect of osteopathic maneuvers in the treatment of asthma: review of literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17784/mtprehabJournal.2015.13.262Keywords:
Osteopathic medicine; Manipulation; Osteopathic; Asthma; Physical therapy specialty; Musculoskeletal manipulations.Abstract
Introduction: Despite the high prevalence of asthma, there is no consensus in the literature regarding non-drug methods for the
treatment of their symptoms. Thus, holistic therapies such as osteopathy can be viable alternatives since evidence has shown benefits of
osteopathic manipulative treatment of clinical conditions such as asthma. Objective: To gather evidence tested osteopathic approach to
treating the symptoms, respiratory dysfunction, medication use and quality of life of patients with asthma. Method: Electronic searches
were conducted between October and November 2014. It was used as descriptors crossed, or alone in the fields “words”, “subject
descriptors”, “title words”, “title” and “abstract” the following keywords combined with Boolean operators AND and OR: Osteopathic
Medicine, osteopathic manipulation, osteopathy, Spinal Manipulation, Manual Therapy, Therapy Skull Sacral, Chiropractic, Chiropractic
Manipulation, Asthma. Initially they were collected all the articles that addressed the manual features used by osteopathic or chiropractic
correlated with the asthma treatment published between 1998 and 2014. Results: It was found 35 articles, of which 28 were excluded
because they did not conform to pre-defined criteria. Thus, seven works were part of this review. Four of them are clinical trials, two
case studies and a pilot study. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that osteopathic manipulative techniques can be used as non-medicated
additional resource in the treatment of patients with asthma. The reviewed studies have identified improving the quality of life, subjective
perception of symptoms and reduce the use of drugs.
