EDITORIAL
Editorial
This January the journal is happy to continue the
January Special Issue initiative. We are pleased to bring you
an issue and recurring topic for continued submissions on
Basic Science and Applied Physiology Research. Please
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allow me to take a moment to thank Alvaro Gurovich and
Rich Severin for suggesting and taking the lead on this
important topic to the profession for both research and
practice.
Dr. Gurovich and Dr. Severin point out in their guest
editorial that producing high-level research in basic and
applied physiology is an important way to move the
physical therapy profession forward. The inclusion of this
section in the journal provides a publication option for
those doing such research with a slightly lower expectation
for immediate clinical impact based on testing human
subjects with clinical conditions. This requirement is offset
by the promise of a deeper mechanistic understanding of
clinically important phenomena. Physiological mechanis-
tic understanding will not replace clinical trials or clinical
epidemiological (observational) studies. But such un-
derstanding provides at least 2 opportunities. Physiological
mechanistic understanding provides the opportunity for
researchers to improve the design of experiments and
observational studies with improved tools, models, and
interventions that are either built into a clinical trial a priori
or help with interpretation a posteriori. For example, a
deeper understanding of the determinants and time course
of physiological response and recovery from applied
physiology guides clinical experiments and observation
designs through all stages of planning from hypothesis
generation to methodological protocol, analysis, interpre-
tation, and discussion. We often take for granted the
history and extent of basic and applied physiology research
we use in clinical trials and epidemiological studies when
we use variables such as blood pressure, heart rate, or
Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal
Copyright © 2021 by the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Section, APTA. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
oxygen consumption as outcomes. By unpacking the
phenomenological black box of physiological mechanisms,
new insights and understanding are available for new
clinical examinations and interventions, new hypotheses,
new analytical tools (think of how far heart rate variability
research has come from the mathematical analysis of
something we take for granted, or worse, potentially ignore
in clinical practice), and new interpretative frameworks.
When clinical trials and epidemiological studies are
designed based on the most up to date basic and applied
physiology they are more relevant to the clinician because
those insights help unpack some of the black boxes that
create complexity barriers between the sample statistics
of a trial and the individual patient. Indeed, as Dr.
Gurovich and Dr. Severin have reminded us, basic and
applied physiology research is an important way to move
the physical therapy profession forward.
There is no need to have only basic and applied
physiology research or only clinical trial outcome research.
These traditions must exist together and inform each other.
The physical therapy profession and the readers of this
journal in particular have much to gain from this balanced
and thoughtful approach to improving the knowledge and
evidence that we use in practice for the benefit of patients
and society.
I truly hope you enjoy this issue and want to thank our
guest editors, authors, and reviewers for the extra work it
has taken to put this issue together.
Wishing you and yours a very Happy New Year!
Sean Collins, PT, ScD
Editor-in-Chief
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
DOI: 10.1097/CPT.0000000000000170
Editorial 1