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Correspondence to Joshua Robert Zadro, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, NSW 2050, Australia; [email protected]
Just over 20 years ago, an editorial titled ‘Now is the time for evidence based physiotherapy’ highlighted the need for high-quality research on the effectiveness of physiotherapy treatments.1 Today, we arguably have sufficient evidence to allow physiotherapists to choose an evidence-based approach to clinical practice. For example, the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) indexes nearly 40 000 randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines. More recently, physiotherapy associations have dramatically increased the marketing of physiotherapy services. This reflects a rapidly expanding workforce and more jurisdictions allowing the public to directly access physiotherapy without the need for medical referral.
Marketing of physiotherapy sometimes draws on evidence but at other times makes claims for physiotherapist roles and services that are not supported by evidence. This could mislead the public and could draw attention away from the strong evidence base within physiotherapy. Consider these examples of marketing from the websites of physiotherapy associations and leading physiotherapy journals from the USA, Australia and UK.
Non–evidence-based marketing
Recent marketing that early physical therapy could help solve the opioid epidemic and save patients with low back pain (LBP) money is likely not evidence-based (online supplementary table 1). These claims were endorsed by influential academic journals, the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA; over 100 000 members) and social media handles with large followings (@MoveForwardPT; an initiative of the APTA with ~26 000 followers).
A good example is a viewpoint in the Journal of Orthopedic Sports Physical Therapy that argued early physical therapy could be part of the solution...