Airrosti (Applied Integration for the Rapid Recovery of Soft Tissue Injuries)  

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Category:  Bodywork

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Description:  A type of massage therapy employed by primarily chiropractors those who have trained using this specific technique.  The company is very secretive about the technique, not listing any details to the public on their website.  This is a commercial company selling training and promoting their own brand of physical therapy services that reportedly is based on the fascial distortion model developed by Stephen Typaldos, DO.  Typaldos trained a female physical therapist in his models but decided not to train any other PTs after she told patients she had developed the methods herself.  Later she sold her business concept to entrepreneurs who started training chiropractors. It appears the Airrosti company engages in soft tissue and joint mobilization, with the purpose of improving function and range of motion.  Their business model is to hire providers to deliver their product, and apparently this is done on faith.  According to the company website, Brenda Reynolds, their Vice President stated "Since we do not share specific details of the treatment model during the interview process the new Providers join us basically trusting that our treatment model really is as amazing as we claim."

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History:  Airrosti was founded by a chiropractor, Sean Tipton in 2004 in Austin Texas.  The official logo was created and they opened their first practice.  They rapidly expanded in Texas over the next few years via incorporation of the technique by other chiropractors and physical therapists and primary care.  In 2006 their first headquarters was opened in San Antonio. By 2007 they had 40 providers, and began direct insurance contracting in 2008 and 2009.  They added Aetna in 2009, that is ironic considers in 2017 Aetna listed Airrosti as "investigational" and not covered. By 2010 they had their 100th employee and had 50 treatment facilities, and by 2012 had 250 employees and 100 practices, having "100,000 patient outcomes", a very odd term used by the company.  By 2015 they had more than 1 million total patient visits since inception.  In 2016 they reported 100,000 patients eliminated their pain. The founding chiropractor retired in 2017.   Airrosti a very limited array of locations with providers only in Washington state, Illinois, Ohio, Virginia, and Texas.

 

Touted benefits:  Their own company literature states “most patients report immediate relief after the first visit with full resolution after an average of three appointments”.  They tout their program prevents “unnecessary MRIs, pharmaceuticals and surgeries” and most insurance is accepted.  Aetna considers this experimental therapy and is not included in "most insurance".  This commercial enterprise with a large board of directors and management, (the principles are not healthcare providers), has over 150 locations with the vast majority in Texas.  Airrosti  centers are primarily concentrated in Texas, and focus on management of soft tissue injuries and chronic pain.  Airrosti uses primarily standard physical therapy modalities but markets themselves as being superior in diagnostics, being "patient-centric" implying other physical therapists are not focused on the patients.  They state their "quality-care approach means we spend significant one-on-one time with every patient, one full hour every visit, to accurately diagnose and resolve the source of your pain".  The website states Our focus at Airrosti is fixing the connective tissue and manually repairing it to its normal state. By doing so, we are able to very effectively increase strength, function and range of motion, while dramatically decreasing pain and allowing our patients to return to normal activity — whether that means running a marathon, doing CrossFit, gardening, playing with the kids, or simply being more productive and pain free at work."

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Training:  Only internal company training is available to providers who sign up for their business model, effectively paying money to the company for their being able to use and market the technique.  In other words, this is a franchise like McDonalds.

 

LEVELS OF EVIDENCE:

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There is no scientific or medically published data on "Applied Integration for the Rapid Recovery of Soft Tissue Injuries" or "Airrosti".

The company states there is an 88.5% injury resolution rate. However internal data provided to Harriet Hall in 2014, only 37% reported having no pain at all after Airrosti treatment series.   With over one million patient visits, there is a shocking lack of published outcome data in scientific literature, suggesting the company is not focused on proving their claims of results.  There is a lack of published scientific evidence that Airrosti is superior to other physical therapy providers and the website presents no data other than their own internally collected unscientific unpublished unreviewed statistics and "testimonials".  Testimonials are used by companies that have no scientific data, and are not valid measurements of outcome.  In an analysis in www. sciencebasedmedicine.org by Harriet Hall published Nov 4, 2014, after repeated requests for scientific data from the company, they failed to provide any scientific or medical proof of effectiveness.

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RECOMMENDATION: Two thumbs down.  No scientific evidence available for this technique that appears to be a business model for providing a type of massage therapy.

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Nearly all are chiropractors.    http://www.airrosti.com