BACKGROUND: In Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) and Manual/Musculoskeletal Medicine (MMM), palpatory diagnosis is performed on a regular basis to diagnose somatic dysfunction (SD). This examination requires careful and precise touch coupled with subjective interpretation by individual examiners who may have been trained to evaluate SD through different methods. Interexaminer reliability studies aim to minimize variance by providing quantifiable scientific data to evaluate specific test protocols which can then be taught to practitioners. In a previous PCOM study, two examiners independently diagnosed innominate bone dysfunction lateralized using the ASIS compression test on a large group of subjects. A pressure monitoring system (IsoTOUCH®, Chattanooga TN) has been used in various studies at the PCOM Human Performance & Biomechanics Laboratory (Kuchera, Jean et al 2006 & Kuchera, Vardy et al 2005) to quantify or standardize forces used in palpatory diagnosis or OMM/MMM treatment applications. This study gathered data during the tesing phase of a new and improved model of this system, using the protocol of the previous ASIS interexaminer reliability study. The data collected during standardization of the system was analyzed in the same manner as the previous study to compare the results of interexaminer reliability to results achieved using live data feed for baseline pressure synchronization between examiners
