A pilot clinical trial of a tool that analyzes patterns of muscle recruitment hopes to improve the accuracy of diagnosis, rehabilitation and case management decisions of musculoskeletal dysfunction of the back and neck.
The clinical trial is being conducted by Impact Medical Solutions, Inc., of Huntington Beach, Calif., and will use its proprietary information technology platform, Muscle Pattern Recognition (MPR).
"The MPR technology will be the first quantitative tool developed for assisting in the diagnosis of the presence or absence of a musculoskeletal dysfunction (sprain/strain injuries) in a patient population," said Alan Goldman, vice president of clinical and medical affairs for Impact Medical Solutions. "The availability of such an evaluation tool to a healthcare provider for patients with soft tissue, non-surgical neck or back complaints will substantially improve the accuracy of diagnosis, rehabilitation and case management decisions."
The pilot clinical trial is currently being conducted at the Utah Spine and Joint Center in Salt Lake City, and the trial is expected to involve several hundred subjects, many of whom are experiencing chronic back pain.
"There is currently a two- to three-week waiting list to get into our trial and we anticipate this trend to continue," said Wayne Cockburn, president and CEO at Impact Medical Solutions. "We are planning on opening a second test site in southern California within the next several weeks and a third site in Michigan during the summer. We expect the results of this pilot trial will be used in our submission to FDA later this year."
