CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY FOR PRETERM NEONATES AND INFANTS: nonsensical research of nonsense does not make sense.

This pilot study evaluates changes in sensorimotor responses in premature infants after receiving craniosacral therapy. The study included a total of 63 infants born between 28 and 31 weeks of gestation. These infants underwent three craniosacral therapy treatments during their hospitalization. The assessment used
a sensorimotor reactivity scale to evaluate eye contact, response to two-point static and kinetic tactile stimulation, turning onto the side, and willingness to grasp and suck an offered finger. Differences in gross scores between pairs of measurements for each item were tested at a 5% significance level using the  Wilcoxon paired test. All differences within the evaluated items were statistically significant (p<0.05).
The strongest effect of the statistically significant dependence was found in the eye contact item. This difference was more pronounced in bottle-fed infants than in breast-fed infants. Therefore, craniosacral therapy may have the potential to enhance self-regulation and promote healthy development in premature infants, but this finding needs to be supported by further research.

The author concluded that craniosacral therapy offers a natural way to strengthen self-regulation and the healthy development of premature babies. The therapy leads to significant improvements in infant sensorimotor responses, especially in eye contact, which is crucial for social interactions, cognitive and language development, and for the formation of an emotional bond with the parent. More significant positive changes were noted in bottle-fed infants. However, the study was observational, without a control group, and the results need to be confirmed by further research with better methodological quality. Thus, CST represents a promising approach to relieving tension, reducing stress, and improving the ability of self-regulation, concentration, and learning in very immature infants.

Where to begin?

Let me just point out two major limitations of the study.

1. A pilot study is supposed to determine the feaibility of a project followed by a definitive trial. This study did not aim at doing this. It therefore is not a pilot study but a useless observation.
2. The author states that the therapy leads to significant improvements… She thus claims that the therapy caused the observed outcome. This claim ignores numerous other causes, e.g. a placebo response, other therapies and care, or the natural history of the condition. The latter seems particularly important. Premature babies develope regardless of whether they receive treatments or not.

Craniosacral therapy is nonsense. Conducting nonsensical research of nonsense does not turn it in good sense.