[chiromommy]

A few statistics to add a little perspective to the discussion:

Risk of death in fatal air crash, flying three
hours on a U.S. commercial airline: 1 in 2,000,000

Risk of death in motor vehicle accident, driving
35 miles: 1 in 2,000,000

Risk of being injured in motor vehicle accident,
driving ½ mile: 1 in 2,000,000

Risk of serious stroke or neurological
complication resulting from a chiropractic neck
adjustment: 1 in 2,000,000 treatments

Risk of death, per year, from GI bleeding due
to NSAID use for osteoarthritis and related
conditions: 800 in 2,000,000

Overall Mortality rate for spinal surgery: 7 in 10,000

Death rate from cervical spine surgery: 4-10 in 10,000

Rate of serious or life-threatening
complications from spinal stenosis surgery: 5 in 100

Risk of a developing a gastric ulcer visible on
endoscopic examination after 1 week’s
treatment with naproxen (at 500mg twice daily): 19 in 100
(380,000 in 2,000,000)


When placed in the context of other "risks," chiropractic care is actually much safer than a lot of commonly accepted procedures. The medical literature contains numerous reports of similar arterial dissections resulting from common medical procedures such as administering anesthesia during surgery, extending the neck during dental procedures or taking X-rays, or from normal activities such as talking on the telephone, swimming, yoga, stargazing, overhead work, or during sleep. “Beauty Parlor Stroke,” caused by extending the neck over a sink while washing the hair, is well-documented, but nobody is calling for an end to the hairdressers' right to wash hair. People fear what they don't understand and those who stand to gain from this fearmongering continue to do a great job of misinforming the public with half-truths and flawed research.

When considering the "safety" of modern medicine versus chiropractic, take a look at malpractice insurance rates. Chiropractic malpractice insurance is a fraction of that of medical doctors, and we all know that insurance companies are all about risk management. If we are the stroke-causing quacks you would have the public believe, why are researchers from Duke University and other reputable healthcare institutions supporting the safety and efficacy of chiropractic care to treat a variety of conditions?

Yes, we are different, and happily so. We do not want to be part of medicine, so there's no need for chiropractors "to be taken out of medicine". Our paradigm is different, part of wellness and prevention, not sickness and disease. We believe that healing comes from Above, Down (from our Creator, not a crystal or dreamcatcher!) and from within the patient (the body knows how to heal itself), not from the outside (through drugs and surgery). Chiropractors seek to correct minor misalignments of the bony skeleton to allow optimum function of the nervous system. What is the primary purpose of the skull and vertebral column? To protect the brain and spinal cord, the core of the master system, the nervous system. Chiropractic is about increased function and empowering the patient to take charge of their own health, not about taking money away from the orthopedic surgeons!

You specifically mentioned x-ray, so I'd like to clarify a couple of things. In the practice of chiropractic, x-ray is used with various protocols of marking and measuring the films to locate very small misalignments, in order to correlate the findings of the physical examination (posture, palpation, electromyography, orthopedic and neurological testing, etc.) The millimeters of misalignment we locate are not the gross misalignments which your eyes were trained to see. No reputable chiropractor looks at a radiograph to determine his or her adjustments each visit -- the primary reasons we take films are; to rule out pathology and malformation, to determine the degree of degeneration, if any, present in the spine and to assess postural alterations. You'd criticize us as irresponsible and reckless if we didn't take x-rays!

From reading the other posts out there, I can tell that a lot of chiropractors have done their own profession a disservice by their unprofessional antics (ie ambulance chasing and daytime TV commercials) and lack of explanation of what we do. There are good and bad practitioners of every profession. The modern chiropractors coming out of school now actually receive a very sound medical education: our basics are the same (taught by MD's at my school), but in the later years of study, where MD's learn advanced pharmacology, emergency medicine, surgery, etc., we learn various techniques of adjusting, most of which don't include the stereotypical neck-twisting type of adjustments. Unfortunately, as a "new breed" of chiropractors, we have the task ahead of us of informing the public of what we do, repairing the damage done by the bad apples, and fighting sensationalist attacks such as this one, based on faulty research and spread around the world by people who are either misinformed, threatened, or just plain hateful.

While I doubt I will change your mind about chiropractors, I hope this post will help someone else out there gain some perspective and perhaps see the other side of the story.

By the way, did you hear the one about the Denver anesthesiologist who fell asleep while monitoring an eight-year-old boy getting tubes in his ears? The child died, so do anesthesiologists "need to be taken out of medicine", too????

[Woahhs]

Very good post Doc.

Personally, I think there's a place for just about every modality in healthcare. Unfortunately, many of them can not be supported by the business model that has become the inflexible dictator of American medicine.

The "go to the doctor" regimen has been imposed, and become so ingrained, serious consideration of alternatives by the average American is all but impossible.

In my estimation, the big fear from Chiropractic in the medical establishment is that it DOES work fairly well with the aforementioned business model, and that means competition.

If aliopaths (sp?) had all the answers, you wouldn't have any business. I've personally observed enough of their failures, without hearing any admission of ignorance, to know the last thing they want is empirical evidence from a thriving industry that knows something they don't.

If for nothing else, Chiropractic is owed a debt of gratitude for introducing the homeostatic concept to Joe Six-pack. "Kill or be killed" is not the only approach to medicine, but you'd never know it from talking to your local M.D.

[gas_dr]

OK, fair enough...we will start at the end of your very well reasoned post

I am aware of the anesthesiologist that fell asleep and the child under his care died. Are you also aware that he was the subject of a criminal investigation, and to the best of my knowledge, also lost his license? Furthermore, you are incorrect that it was an ear tube...ear tubes take about 5 minutes to put in and are usually done my mask anesthesia. As the anesthesiologist has to physically hold the mask on the patient's face and ventilate the patient manually, it is impossible for him to have fallen asleep in this case. I am intensely familiar with the case, and you have your facts about half right and half wrong. Nonetheless, I thoroughly agree -- he had to go, and go he did.

Onto your statiscs about standard allopathic care. What are your sources? If you are seriously going to quote such controversial stats (ie 1/20 risk of serious or life threatening complications from spinal stenosis surgery), you should site a source as well as what the complications are. I do not accept these statistics as if there were a 5% chance of major morbidity and mortality, these surgeries would not be routinely performed.

Next question: are you denying the validity of the statement that vertebral artery injury has risen substantially and in a statistically significant way since the common practice of chiropracty? If not, what is the epidemiological cause for these catastrophic increases in otherwise young people? Vertebral artery tear or thrombosis is incredibly rare, even in the most advanced of vasculopatic conditions. I notice you did not respond to this?

Finally, onto the contention that chiropractors do not want to be part of medicine. Then why is there a drive in the ROcky Mountain West for chiropractors to attempt independent practice with Rx abilities? Why do you require X-ray for your work? I reject the premise that an X-ray is able to resolve millimeters of misalignment when this degree of measurement is well within the standard error of positioning and technique. That kind of resolution at minimum requires CT Scan or MRI. Yet I see very few chiropractors utilizing these standard allopathic technologies.

I disagree with your view that the central nervous system is the master system. It is vital, but the nervous system is not capable of reversing vasculopathy, gastropathy etc. etc. etc. The human body is an amazing organism (well created!) that is in integration of multiple vital systems. How can the central nervous system exist without the support of the cardia system, pulmonary system, or any of the others? Allopathic medicine has the history of scientific method fully behind it. We have well designed prospective, randomized trials that allow us reasonable therapeutics. This is not the case in alternative medicines.

Finally, your quip about malpractice is a flat out cheap shot. From your perspectivce -- malpractice is about risk management, and the fact is that chiropractic malpractice is infinitely less because the STANDARD of CARE in AMERICA IS ALLOPATHIC MEDICINE. We do many more procedures, and many more risky procedures. But those procedures are based on centuries of scientific progress and refinement via accepted methodology.

I agree that there are physicians who have got to go, but our profession has proof of virually everything that we do. I will happily discuss any point of the rational therapeutics of medicine based on the pathological state of disease whenever you want.

Until then, I await your sources and citations for your so called statistics...

[HardStarboard]

I have gravitated to the "NUCCA" branch of chiropractic for congenital back problems.

NUCCA, "Neck and Upper Cranial Chiropractic Assoc." is a much less strenuous adjustment than that practiced by the major branch of chiropractic - Parker method (I think).

It keeps me able to walk with freedom - when my Dr. adjusts my neck ever so gently, I feel a warm sensation down my back and right leg, and my rt. ankle (where the problem show up) loosens up.

If you suffer from any kind of back pain it is worth checking with a NUCCA chiropractor. They are hard to find -only about 400 in the US.

An interesting note, mine has treated a Dr., the head of surgery at the major surgical hospital in town (a major west coast city). Another note, they take x-rays before they work on you, and if your problem is not addressable by their techniques, they won't work on you.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

I had a chiropractor work on my alignment after my first pregnacy. I loved going, felt better, and my skepticism wore off.

My question to you (welcome aboard, btw :)) and any FReeper chiropractors...

Can anyone explain to me, what the heck it was that this guy and his wife were trying to prove to me in the following example?:

Mr. Chiro had me do some strength tests with my legs. Then like a magician's assistant, in came Mrs. Chiro to "interpret" my ailments and weakness by "reading" me via energy or something which traveled through a human chain.

What in the heck was that? I thought I was involved in an alien encounter.

Something else baffling me most right now, is how you posted before you became a FReeper (lol!).