A profile of osteopathic care in private practices in the United Kingdom: a national pilot using standardised data collection

Increasing interest is being shown in osteopathy on a national and international basis. Since little prospective data had been available concerning the day-to-day practice of the profession, a standardised data collection tool was developed to try and address this issue. The tool development process has been described in an earlier paper. The standardised data collection (SDC) tool underwent national piloting between April and July 2009 in United Kingdom private practices. Osteopaths volunteered to participate and collected data on consecutive new patients or patients presenting with a new symptom episode for a period of one month; follow-up data were collected for a further two months. A total of 1630 completed datasets from the SDC pilot were analysed by the project team. Data generated from the national pilot showed that lumbar symptoms were the most commonly presented in patients (36%), followed by cervical spine (15%), sacroiliac/pelvic/groin (7.9%), head/facial area (7%), shoulder (6.8%), and thoracic spine (6%). A total of 48.8% of patients reported comorbidities, the most common being hypertension (11.7%), followed by asthma (6.6%), and arthritis (5.7%). Outcome data were collected looking at the patients’ response to treatment, and any form of treatment reactions. The profiling information collected using the SDC tool provides a contemporary picture of osteopathic practice in the United Kingdom.