Table 1.
Sample overview.
| Therapy types | Total sample | Large trials | Small trials | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| n | % | n | % | n | % | |
| Manual therapy with spinal manipulation | 48 | 24.2 | 36 | 25.0 | 12 | 22.2 |
| Craniosacral therapy and gentle myofascial release | 22 | 11.1 | 16 | 11.1 | 6 | 11.1 |
| Other manual therapy | 64 | 32.3 | 40 | 27.8 | 24 | 44.4 |
| Rehabilitation/physiotherapy | 22 | 11.1 | 16 | 11.1 | 6 | 11.1 |
| Self-management | 5 | 2.5 | 4 | 2.7 | 1 | 1.9 |
| Cognitive behavioural and other psychotherapy | 27 | 13.6 | 26 | 18.1 | 1 | 1.9 |
| Spiritual/energetic/esoteric healing | 8 | 4.0 | 5 | 3.5 | 3 | 5.6 |
| Other | 2 | 1.0 | 1 | 0.7 | 1 | 1.9 |
| Intervention complexity* | ||||||
| Simple | 112 | 56.6 | 73 | 50.7 | 39 | 72.2 |
| Complex | 82 | 41.4 | 71 | 49.3 | 11 | 20.4 |
| Pain descriptor | ||||||
| Musculoskeletal pain | 121 | 61.1 | 88 | 61.1 | 33 | 61.1 |
| Headaches and orofacial pain | 22 | 11.1 | 15 | 10.4 | 7 | 13.0 |
| Diffuse chronic pain | 18 | 9.1 | 16 | 11.1 | 2 | 3.7 |
| Injury-related and medical intervention-related pain | 19 | 9.6 | 8 | 5.6 | 11 | 20.4 |
| Cancer-related pain | 6 | 3.0 | 6 | 4.2 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Visceral pain | 5 | 2.5 | 4 | 2.8 | 1 | 1.9 |
| Neuropathic pain | 5 | 2.5 | 5 | 3.5 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Pregnancy-related pain | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.7 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Preregistered trial protocol available | ||||||
| Preregistered | 114 | 57.9 | 90 | 62.9 | 24 | 44.4 |
| Total included | Total sample | Large trials | Small trials | |||
| 198 | 144 | 54 | ||||
The types of therapies, intervention complexity, and pain population are provided for the entire sample and per group. “Large” trials had 20 or more participants per arm, and their pain-related outcome data were used for meta-analyses. Special cases (large trials): In one trial, data from the active intervention group was used twice to compare it with 2 different sham controls: Bialosky et al. (2014) used a “standard” and an “enhanced” sham control. Three publications reported more than one trial: D'Souza et al. (2008) studied 2 groups with different types of headaches, and Assefi et al.'s (2008) publication included 2 active interventions and a matching sham control each. Finally, Sharpe et al. (2012) reported 2 trials in a single publication, which were treated entirely independently here. In general, only patients who informed the present analyses are counted in this table, patients were not counted twice, and analyses of reporting refer to individual trials.
Intervention complexity: single-step or single-technique interventions were judged as “simple,” irrespective of how often these were applied, and others as complex. N = 194 unique trials.