This position paper addresses the importance of biomechanics research and teaching that has been going on at the chiropractic institutions. This was done by literature search through medline and conference proceedings of chiropractic conferences and visiting some of the chiropractic institutions in the United States. Chiropractic institutions have limited biomechanics in their curriculum. Biomechanical structure and function of the spine and extremities are either taught as stand alone or taught in conjunction with the anatomy courses, or taught along with the palpation and assessment of the extremities and the spine. Most of the materials the students are exposed cover the kinematics of the extremity joints, spinal regions (cervical, thoracic, lumbar and pelvis), the altered kinematics as related to pathology and/or subluxation. Most of the institutions do not cover the topics related to the biomechanics of manipulation rigorously incorporating the body of available knowledge in the scientific literature. Very few institutions have biomechanics laboratories to demonstrate the biomechanics through experimentation. There is need to develop knowledge base of the biomechanics of spinal manipulation and transferring the knowledge in training the future chiropractors. These include the biomechanical understanding of the normal and pathological spine, kinematics, external forces involved in the spinal manipulation, and the internal biomechanical effects of the spinal manipulation, and development of computer modeling and animation of spinal manipulation for visualization purposes. There is also a need to train the future doctors of chiropractic using high technology quantification of the forces involved during manipulation.
Learning Objectives: 1.The audience will have an knowledge of biomechanics research at chiropractic institutions. 2. The audience will have an understanding of the biomechanics curriculum at chiropractic institutions. 3. The audience will get an idea of what needs to be done to transfer biomechanics research to teaching
Keywords: Chiropractic,
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.