The Awareness of Manual Therapy in Turkish Society: A Cross Sectional Survey Study and an Overview of Manual Therapy

Abstract

Objective: To examine the information level in Turkish society on manual therapy and to identify necessary factors in establishing the awareness of manual therapy. Material and Methods: Patients with no structural abnormality and evaluated as functional locomotor system dysfunction were enrolled in the study among patients with musculoskeletal pain who admitted to tertiary outpatient clinics of our university hospital between May and June 2020. A self-administered survey was prepared. Age, gender and educational level information were collected. Patients' general knowledge level regarding manual therapy, their general attitude towards manual therapy and complementary medicine, their knowledge level about the indications-contraindications and effectiveness of manual therapy and their opinions in terms of who should be the prescribers and practitioners of manual therapy were evaluated and discussed in the light of available literature. Results: The survey was conducted on 104 participants. Of the participants, 45.4% stated that they never heard of manual therapy and only 16.3% stated that they did research and are knowledgeable on manual therapy. Of the participants, 81.7% stated that they believed traditional and complementary medicine methods could be effective and 46.4% of them stated they occasionally demanded manual therapy-like implementations from their relatives. Lower back pain (68.9%), neck pain (68.9%) and upper back pain (66%) are the most expressed indications by the participants. While 32% of the participants believed that cervical and lumbar disc hernias could be cured with manual therapy, 54.8% of the participants stated that manual therapy was as effective as other physical therapy methods. While 50% of the participants stated that physicians should be decisive about the compatibility of manual therapy, 53.5% stated that physiotherapists should apply manual therapy. Conclusion: Manual therapy is an unknown treatment method even among patients with a high education level. Despite this, patients believe that manual therapy can be effective and they may be in quest of manual therapy or similar implementations. The use of manual therapy for disc hernias seems to be an under-known and abusable issue in the society. Patients expect physicians to be decision maker and informative about in which disorders manual therapy can be applied and they prefer trained healthcare professionals to apply therapy.