BACKGROUND: Although practice protocols exist for SMT and functional rehabilitation, no practice protocols exist for structural rehabilitation. Traditional chiropractic practice guidelines have been limited to acute and chronic pain treatment, with limited inclusion of functional and exclusion of structural rehabilitation procedures. OBJECTIVE: (1) To derive an evidence-based practice protocol for structural rehabilitation from publications on clinical biomechanics of posture (CBP) methods, and (2) to compare the evidence for diversified, SMT, and CBP. METHODS: Clinical control trials utilizing CBP methods and spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) were obtained from searches in Mantis, CINAHL, and Index Medicus. Using data from SMT review articles, evidence for diversified technique (as taught in chiropractic colleges), SM7 and CBP were rated and compared. RESULTS: From the evidence from clinical control trials on SMT and CBP, there is very little evidence support for diversified (our rating 18), as taught in chiropractic colleges, for the treatment of pain subjects, while CBP (our rating 46) and SMT for neck pain (rating 58) arid low back pain (our rating 202) have evidence-based support. CONCLUSIONS: While CBP technique has approximately as much evidence-based support as SMT for neck pain, CBP has more evidence to support its methods than the diversified technique taught in chiropractic colleges, but not as much as SMT for low back pain. The evolution of chiropractic specialization has occurred, and doctors providing structural-based chiropractic care require protocol guidelines for patient quality assurance and standardization. A structural rehabilitation protocol was developed based on evidence from CBP publications.

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