BACKGROUND: Musculoskeletal pain is among the most common reasons for seeking care, specialist competence for its treatment in primary care limited and waiting lists for orthopaedics often amongst the longest. Many referrals to orthopaedics do not concern disorders that benefit from surgery. Manual therapy is effective, yet not integrated in national health care systems, and there is a lack of research on other than neck and low back pain, and a lack of long-term follow-ups. The present study evaluates the long-term effects of a manual therapy (naprapathy) for common orthopaedic disorders.

METHODS: An 8-year follow-up (96 months) of a pragmatic randomized controlled trial of naprapathy (experimental group) versus standard orthopaedic care (control group) for non-surgical patients of working age with the most common musculoskeletal disorders on the waiting lists (n = 78). Bodily pain, physical function (SF36), Quality of life (QoL; SF6D), and data on health care utilization were collected. The treatments lasted from January 2007 to November 2007.

RESULTS: N = 75 participants in the original study sample completed the 8-year follow-up. The differences in bodily pain (21.7 (95% CI: 9.1-34.3)), physical function (17.6 (6.7-28.4)), and QoLs (0.823 (95% CI: 0.785-0.862) compared with 0.713 (95% CI: 0.668-0.758)) were statistically significantly in favor of the experimental group (p-values < 0.01). After sensitivity analysis the experimental group had altogether 260 health care visits compared with 1161 in the control group.

CONCLUSIONS: Naprapathy is a continuously effective treatment. Together with earlier research our study suggests that specialized manual therapy should be considered when triaging patients with common non-surgical musculoskeletal disorders in national health care systems.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: Not applicable, as per information given by ClinicalTrials.gov.