Posted on 11/09/2007 12:21:14 PM PST by Red Badger
Going to a chiropractor to treat back pain could be a waste of time, according to a new study which found that having your spine manipulated does nothing to speed up recovery. Current treatment guidelines for acute back pain recommend that, in the first instance, GPs advise patients to remain active and avoid bed rest and take paracetamol for the pain. If that does not work, patients are referred for spinal manipulative therapy and given non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs such as ibuprofen and diclofenac to treat the pain. Mark Hancock, of the back pain research group at the University of Sydney, studied 240 patients with short-term lower back pain who had already been given both advice and paracetamol. The patients were randomly allocated to four groups and given different treatments: NSAIDs with placebo manipulative therapy; manipulative therapy with placebo drugs; drugs with therapy; or double placebo. "Neither diclofenac nor spinal manipulative therapy gave clinically useful effects on the primary outcome of time to recovery," the researchers wrote in the Lancet today. "If patients have high rates of recovery with baseline care, and no clinically worthwhile benefit from the addition of diclofenac or spinal manipulative therapy, then GPs can manage patients confidently without exposing them to increased risks and costs associated with NSAIDs or spinal manipulative therapy." In an accompanying article in the Lancet, Bart Koes of Erasmus University medical centre in Rotterdam wrote: "The limited or absent beneficial effect of diclofenac for acute lower back pain after adequate first-line treatment may have wide implications. NSAIDs are widely prescribed for a range of acute musculoskeletal disorders. The important message is that the management of acute low back pain in primary care (advice and prescription of paracetamol) is sufficient for most patients."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Southern Comfort will work just as well.........
You are correct. The manipulate the minds of patients and their wallets...........
If I wanted a spinal manipulation, I would go to an osteopath, not a chiro.
My wife had a rear end collision while sitting at a redlight 11-12-06, almost one year ago exactly. She went to a chiro-quackter upon the advice of a real doctor (later to be found out he's a buddy of said chiroquack). He's not been able to do anything except aggravate the original injury while saying "just a little while longer" every week until the insurance ran out then it's, "Well, you'll haveta see a neuro doctor, because it must be a pinched nerve"..............
I’m not sure about that. This year I had a shoulder problem that didn’t clear up despite doing all the right exercises (karate, swimming, weights) and following doc’s advice to take NSAIDs. The above plus chiropractic has returned normality to it.
I’m sure there’s a wide variance in chiropractors’ skill. Heck, there’s a wide variance in doctors’ skill. Some are brilliant and some are destructive at best.
I think there is a very narrow range of situations where they can actually do some good, without drugs or surgery. But the ambulance chasers who advertise that you need to go see them after an accident, insist on thousands of dollars worth of xrays and extended “treatment plans” give the good ones a bad name. If a chiropractor actually helps a person feel better, no number of reports by Captain Obvious will change that person’s mind. Each to his own.
YDRC! As ancient as Palmer is, it never taught any such thing. Chiropractors were the first to recognize that back pain is due to microbial inflammation. The mainstream has caught up only in the past two or three years.
LOL. The author of this article has never had persistent lower back pain. A good chiropractor is worth his weight in gold to those of us who do.
Ditto!
chiropractor not required to have a license from the DEA?
All your MD’s and DO’s are required to pay the DEA tax to practice medicine. The federal Government is in control of the doctors and if you think otherwise you are not informed
Many doctors go to Chiropractors themselves, and send their families.
Chiropractic is like any other profession, there are good, bad, and outstanding.
A good Chiropractor works hand in hand with your physician, and can be extremely effective in dealing with many health issues.
Yeah, but there’s a big difference between a chiro who can treat a bad back and the quacks who claim they can cure any disease if you just keep coming back often enough. Some chiros can help, but some prey on the gullible.
This is the Socialist Guardian in Great Britain, the home of Socialized, National Health Care.
Elect a Democrat who wants Nationalized Health Care, and you will no longer to make your own choices for treatment.
BTW, I have never been to a chiropractor in my life. I just know many people who benefit from them.
It seems this is just another non-scientific study conducted with a political agenda.
My chiro stopped me from having an extremely risky and invasive neurosurgery that the surgeons professed was absolutely necessary to correct a spinal injury and who laughed at the idea of a chiropractor taking a look. The chiro took x-rays and determined all that I had was a rotation of the spine that was prevented by inflamed tissue from rotating itself back into place. A simple and non-painful manual adjustment to the spine by manipulation of the hip joint rotated the spine back into place. That was 10 years ago and with no ill effects since; strong as ever and no pain or lasting injury.
To try to convince the populace that chiropractors have no positive and alternative treatments versus surgery or drug therapies is to ignore the facts for the purposes of an agenda of financial gain. These “doctors” ought to lose their medical licenses.
I had a friend who was a quackopractor. I had serious neck, shoulder and arm pain. He diagnosed it as a pinched nerve in the neck, slammed me around a few times, and voila! Pain instantly gone.
Well, when our insurance ran out, as well as the other driver’s who was at fault, the chiropractor suddenly decided that there was no more he could do, and referred us to a neuro doc...............
“Before they go there, who paid for the study?”
The Oriental Massage lobby.
Well, that at least proves that second opinions are important.
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