Evaluation of research trends in physical therapy through analysis of articles published at the world confederation for physical therapy congress.
Wan-Hee Lee, Ju-Ri Jeong, Joohee Hahn
PMID 28174476WHAT IT FOUND
Musculoskeletal spine, human movement analysis, and care for older people were the most common research topics at the 2015 World Confederation for Physical Therapy congress.
Primary health care and technology were the least represented. This maps the field's focus but provides no data on patient outcomes.
Key findings
01Musculoskeletal spine (89 items) and human movement analysis (88 items) were the most frequent research themes among the 1,339 papers presented.
02Research on older people was the third most common theme, with 84 papers.
03Primary health care and information management/technology were the least represented subjects, with 6 papers each.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The analysis is restricted to papers accepted for one specific congress (WCPT 2015), so it does not represent global physical therapy research or work published in journals outside this conference. The study counts the number of papers by topic but does not evaluate the quality, sample size, or clinical significance of the research presented. Participation bias is likely, as the congress was held in Singapore, which may have inflated the number of submissions from Asian countries compared to those from other regions.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the high number of papers on musculoskeletal spine or older people as proof that these treatments are more effective than others. This study only counts how many papers were presented on each topic; it does not report the results or quality of those studies.