risk
Yoga is a popular form of alternative medicine. Evidence for its effectiveness is scarce and generally far from convincing. But at least it is safe! At least this is what yoga enthusiasts would claim. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true; adverse events have also been reported with some regularity. Their frequency is, however, not known.
A new study was aimed at filling this gap. It was conducted to elucidate the frequencies and characteristics of adverse events of yoga performed in classes and the risk factors of such events.
The subjects were 2508 people taking yoga classes and 271 yoga therapists conducting the classes. A survey for yoga class attendees was performed on adverse events that occurred during a yoga class on the survey day. A survey for yoga therapists was performed on adverse events that the therapists had observed in their students to date. Adverse events were defined as “undesirable symptoms or responses that occurred during a yoga class”.
Among 2508 yoga class attendees, 1343 (53.5%) had chronic diseases and 1063 (42.3%) were receiving medication at hospitals. There were 687 class attendees (27.8%) who reported some type of undesirable symptoms after taking a yoga class. Musculoskeletal symptoms such as myalgia were the most common symptoms, involving 297 cases, followed by neurological symptoms and respiratory symptoms. Most adverse events (63.8%) were mild and did not interfere with class participation. The risk factors for adverse events were examined, and the odds ratios for adverse events were significantly higher in attendees with chronic disease, poor physical condition on the survey day, or a feeling that the class was physically and mentally stressful. In particular, the occurrence of severe adverse events that interfered with subsequent yoga practice was high among elderly participants (70 years or older) and those with chronic musculoskeletal diseases.
The authors concluded that the results of this large-scale survey demonstrated that approximately 30% of yoga class attendees had experienced some type of adverse event. Although the majority had mild symptoms, the survey results indicated that attendees with chronic diseases were more likely to experience adverse events associated with their disease. Therefore, special attention is necessary when yoga is introduced to patients with stress-related, chronic diseases.
I find these findings interesting and thought-provoking. The main question that they raise is, I think, the flowing: ARE THERE ANY CONDITIONS FOR WHICH YOGA DEMONSTRABLY GENERATES MORE GOOD THAN HARM?
If we listen to acupuncturists and their supporters, we might get the impression that acupuncture is totally devoid of risk. Readers of this blog will know that this is not quite true. A recent case report is a further reminder that acupuncture can cause serious complications; in extreme cases it can even kill.
A male patient in his late forties died right after an acupuncture treatment. A medico-legal autopsy disclosed severe haemorrhaging around the right vagus nerve in the neck. All other organs were normal, and laboratory findings revealed nothing significant. Thus, the authors of this case-report concluded that the man most probably died from severe vagal bradycardia and/or arrhythmia resulting from vagus nerve stimulation following acupuncture: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a death due to vagus nerve injury after acupuncture.
In total, around 100 deaths have been reported after acupuncture in the medical literature. ‘This is a negligible small figure’ claim acupuncture fans. True, it is a small number, but it could just be the tip of a much larger ice-berg: there is no reporting system that could possibly pick up severe complications, and in the absence of such a scheme, nobody can name reliable incidence rates. And even if the numbers of severe complications and deaths are small – even a single fatality would seem one too many.
The deaths that are currently on record are mostly due to bilateral pneumothorax or cardiac tamponade. The present case of vagus nerve injury seems to be ‘a first’. Perhaps we should watch out for similar events?
IF WE DON’T LOOK, WE DON’T SEE.
Here is another short passage from my new book A SCIENTIST IN WONDERLAND. It describes the event where I was first publicly exposed to the weird and wonderful world of alternative medicine in the UK. It is also the scene which, in my original draft, was the very beginning of the book.
I hope that the excerpt inspires some readers to read the entire book – it currently is BOOK OF THE WEEK in the TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION!!!
… [an] aggressive and curious public challenge occurred a few weeks later during a conference hosted by the Research Council for Complementary Medicine in London. This organization had been established a few years earlier with the aim of conducting and facilitating research in all areas of alternative medicine. My impression of this institution, and indeed of the various other groups operating in this area, was that they were far too uncritical, and often proved to be hopelessly biased in favour of alternative medicine. This, I thought, was an extraordinary phenomenon: should research councils and similar bodies not have a duty to be critical and be primarily concerned about the quality of the research rather than the overall tenor of the results? Should research not be critical by nature? In this regard, alternative medicine appeared to be starkly different from any other type of health care I had encountered previously.
On short notice, I had accepted an invitation to address this meeting packed with about 100 proponents of alternative medicine. I felt that their enthusiasm and passion were charming but, no matter whom I talked to, there seemed to be little or no understanding of the role of science in all this. A strange naïvety pervaded this audience: alternative practitioners and their supporters seemed a bit like children playing “doctor and patient”. The language, the rituals and the façade were all more or less in place, but somehow they seemed strangely detached from reality. It felt a bit as though I had landed on a different planet. The delegates passionately wanted to promote alternative medicine, while I, with equal passion and conviction, wanted to conduct good science. The two aims were profoundly different. Nevertheless, I managed to convince myself that they were not irreconcilable, and that we would manage to combine our passions and create something worthwhile, perhaps even groundbreaking.
Everyone was excited about the new chair in Exeter; high hopes and expectations filled the room. The British alternative medicine scene had long felt discriminated against because they had no academic representation to speak of. I certainly did sympathize with this particular aspect and felt assured that, essentially, I was amongst friends who realized that my expertise and their enthusiasm could add up to bring about progress for the benefit of many patients.
During my short speech, I summarized my own history as a physician and a scientist and outlined what I intended to do in my new post—nothing concrete yet, merely the general gist. I stressed that my plan was to apply science to this field in order to find out what works and what doesn’t; what is safe and what isn’t. Science, I pointed out, generates progress through asking critical questions and through testing hypotheses. Alternative medicine would either be shown by good science to be of value, or it would turn out to be little more than a passing fad. The endowment of the Laing chair represented an important mile-stone on the way towards the impartial evaluation of alternative medicine, and surely this would be in the best interest of all parties concerned.
To me, all this seemed an entirely reasonable approach, particularly as it merely reiterated what I had just published in an editorial for The Lancet entitled “Scrutinizing the Alternatives”.
My audience, however, was not impressed. When I had finished, there was a stunned, embarrassed silence. Finally someone shouted angrily from the back row: “How did they dare to appoint a doctor to this chair?” I was startled by this question and did not quite understand. What had prompted this reaction? What did this audience expect? Did they think my qualifications were not good enough? Why were they upset by the appointment of a doctor? Who else, in their view, might be better equipped to conduct medical research?
It wasn’t until weeks later that it dawned on me: they had been waiting for someone with a strong commitment to the promotion of alternative medicine. Such a commitment could only come from an alternative practitioner. A doctor personified the establishment, and “alternative” foremost symbolized “anti-establishment”. My little speech had upset them because it confirmed their worst fears of being annexed by “the establishment”. These enthusiasts had hoped for a believer from their own ranks and certainly not for a doctor-scientist to be appointed to the world’s first chair of complementary medicine. They had expected that Exeter University would lend its support to their commercial and ideological interests; they had little understanding of the concept that universities should not be in the business of promoting anything other than high standards.
Even today, after having given well over 600 lectures on the topic of alternative medicine, and after coming on the receiving end of ever more hostile attacks, aggressive questions and personal insults, this particular episode is still etched deeply into my memory. In a very real way, it set the scene for the two decades to come: the endless conflicts between my agenda of testing alternative medicine scientifically and the fervent aspirations of enthusiasts to promote alternative medicine uncritically. That our positions would prove mutually incompatible had been predictable from the very start. The writing had been on the wall—but it took me a while to be able to fully understand the message.
Iyengar Yoga, named after and developed by B. K. S. Iyengar, is a form of Hatha Yoga that has an emphasis on detail, precision and alignment in the performance of posture (asana) and breath control (pranayama). The development of strength, mobility and stability is gained through the asanas.
B.K.S. Iyengar has systematised over 200 classical yoga poses and 14 different types of Pranayama (with variations of many of them) ranging from the basic to advanced. This helps ensure that students progress gradually by moving from simple poses to more complex ones and develop their mind, body and spirit step by step.
Iyengar Yoga often makes use of props, such as belts, blocks, and blankets, as aids in performing asanas (postures). The props enable students to perform the asanas correctly, minimising the risk of injury or strain, and making the postures accessible to both young and old.
Sounds interesting? But does it work?
The objective of this recent systematic review was to conduct a systematic review of the existing research on Iyengar yoga for relieving back and neck pain. The authors conducted extensive literature searches and found 6 RCTs that met the inclusion criteria.
The difference between the groups on the post-intervention pain or functional disability intensity assessment was, in all 6 studies, favouring the yoga group, which projected a decrease in back and neck pain.
The authors concluded that Iyengar yoga is an effective means for both back and neck pain in comparison to control groups. This systematic review found strong evidence for short-term effectiveness, but little evidence for long-term effectiveness of yoga for chronic spine pain in the patient-centered outcomes.
So, if we can trust this evidence (I would not call the evidence ‘strong), we have yet another treatment that might be effective for acute back and neck pain. The trouble, I fear, is not that we have too few such treatments, the trouble seems to be that we have too many of them. They all seem similarly effective, and I cannot help but wonder whether, in fact, they are all similarly ineffective.
Regardless of the answer to this troubling question, I feel the need to re-state what I have written many times before: FOR A CONDITION WITH A MULTITUDE OF ALLEGEDLY EFFECTIVE THERAPIES, IT MIGHT BE BEST TO CHOSE THE ONE THAT IS SAFEST AND CHEAPEST.
In the past, I have been involved in several court cases where patients had complained about mistreatment by charlatans. Similarly I have acted as an expert witness for the General Medical Council in similar circumstances.
So, it is true, quacks are sometimes being held to account by their victims. But, generally speaking, patients seem to complain very rarely when they fall in the hands of even the most incompetent of quacks.
Here is one telling reminder showing how long it can take until a complaint is finally filed.
Dr Julian Kenyon is, according to his website, an integrated medicine physician and Medical Director of the Dove Clinic for Integrated Medicine, Winchester and London. Dr Julian Kenyon is Founder-Chairman of the British Medical Acupuncture Society in 1980 and Co-Founder of the Centre for the Study of Complementary Medicine in Southampton and London where he worked for many years before starting The Dove Clinic in 2000. He is also Founder/President of the British Society for Integrated Medicine and is an established authority in the field of complementary treatment approaches for a wide range of medical conditions. He has written approximately 20 books and has had many academic papers published in peer review journals* and has several patents to his name. He graduated from the University of Liverpool with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery and subsequently with a research degree, Doctor of Medicine. In 1972, he was appointed a Primary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.
*[I found only 4 on Medline]
Kenyon has been on sceptics’ radar for a very long time. For instance, he is one of the few UK doctors who use ‘LIVE BLOOD ANALYSIS’, a bogus diagnostic method that can harm patients through false-negative or false-positive diagnoses. A 2003 undercover investigation for BBC 1 South’s ‘Inside Out’ accused Dr Julian Kenyon of using yet another spurious diagnostic test at his clinic near Winchester. Kenyon has, for many years, been working together with George Lewith, another of the country’s ‘leading’ complementary doctors. In 1994, the two published an article about their co-operation; here is its abstract:
This paper outlines the main research effort that has taken place within the Centre for the Study of Complementary Medicine over the last 10 years. It demonstrates the Centre’s expertise and interest in a whole variety of areas, including the social implications and development of complementary medicine, clinical trial methodology, the evaluation of complementary medical machinery, the effects of electromagnetic fields on health and the investigation of the subtle energetic processes involved in complementary medicine. Our future plans are outlined.
Lewith and Kenyon have been using a technique called electrodermal testing for more than 20 years. Considering the fact that the two doctors authored a BMJ paper which concluded that electrodermal machines couldn’t detect environmental allergies, this seems more than a little surprising.
Using secret filming, ‘Inside Out’ showed Dr Kenyon testing a six-year-old boy and then deciding that he is sensitive to dust mites. Later, Dr Kenyon insists that he made his diagnosis purely on the boy’s symptoms and that he didn’t use the machine to test for dust mites. The BBC then took the boy for a conventional skin prick test, which suggested he didn’t have any allergies at all. But Dr Kenyon then says the conventional test may not be accurate: “He may be one of the 10% who actually are negative to the skin tests but benefit from measures to reduce dust mite exposure.”
Despite this very public disclosure, Kenyon was able to practice unrestrictedly for many years.
In December 2014, it was reported in the Hampshire Chronicle that Dr Kenyon eventually did, after a complaint from a patient, end up in front of the General Medical Council’s conduct tribunal. The panel heard that, after a 20-minute consultation, which cost £300, Dr Kenyon told one terminally-ill man with late-stage cancer: “I am not claiming we can cure you, but there is a strong possibility that we would be able to increase your median survival time with the relatively low-risk approaches described here.” He also made bold statements about the treatment’s supposed benefits to an undercover reporter who posed as the husband of a woman with breast cancer.
After considering the full details of the case, Ben Fitzgerald, for the General Medical Council, had called for Dr Kenyon to be suspended, but the panel’s chairman Dr Surendra Kumar said Dr Kenyon’s misconduct was not serious enough to warrant a ban. The panel eventually imposed restrictions on Kenyon’s licence lasting for 12 months.
I estimate that patients are exposed to quackery from doctors and alternative practitioners thousands of times every day. Why then, I ask myself, do so few of them complain? Here are some of the possible answers to this important question:
- They do not dare to.
- They feel embarrassed.
- They don’t know how to.
- They cannot be bothered and fear the agro.
- They fail to identify quackery and fall for the nonsense they are being told.
- They even might perceive benefit from treatments which, in fact, are pure quackery.
Whatever the reasons, I think it is regrettable that not far more quacks are held to account – regardless of whether the charlatan in question as studied medicine or not. If you disagree, consider this: not filing a complaint means that many more patients will be put at risk.
Few subjects lead to such heated debate as the risk of stroke after chiropractic manipulations (if you think this is an exaggeration, look at the comment sections of previous posts on this subject). Almost invariably, one comes to the conclusion that more evidence would be helpful for arriving at firmer conclusions. Before this background, this new publication by researchers (mostly chiropractors) from the US ‘Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice’ is noteworthy.
The purpose of this study was to quantify the risk of stroke after chiropractic spinal manipulation, as compared to evaluation by a primary care physician, for Medicare beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with neck pain.
The researchers conducted a retrospective cohort analysis of a 100% sample of annualized Medicare claims data on 1 157 475 beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with an office visit to either a chiropractor or to a primary care physician for neck pain. They compared hazard of vertebrobasilar stroke and any stroke at 7 and 30 days after office visit using a Cox proportional hazards model. We used direct adjusted survival curves to estimate cumulative probability of stroke up to 30 days for the 2 cohorts.
The findings indicate that the proportion of subjects with a stroke of any type in the chiropractic cohort was 1.2 per 1000 at 7 days and 5.1 per 1000 at 30 days. In the primary care cohort, the proportion of subjects with a stroke of any type was 1.4 per 1000 at 7 days and 2.8 per 1000 at 30 days. In the chiropractic cohort, the adjusted risk of stroke was significantly lower at 7 days as compared to the primary care cohort (hazard ratio, 0.39; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-0.45), but at 30 days, a slight elevation in risk was observed for the chiropractic cohort (hazard ratio, 1.10; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.19).
The authors conclude that, among Medicare B beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with neck pain, incidence of vertebrobasilar stroke was extremely low. Small differences in risk between patients who saw a chiropractor and those who saw a primary care physician are probably not clinically significant.
I do, of course, applaud any new evidence on this rather ‘hot’ topic – but is it just me, or are the above conclusions a bit odd? Five strokes per 1000 patients is definitely not “extremely low” in my book; and furthermore I do wonder whether all experts would agree that a doubling of risk at 30 days in the chiropractic cohort is “probably not clinically significant” – particularly, if we consider that chiropractic spinal manipulation has so very little proven benefit.
My message to (chiropractic) researchers is simple: PLEASE REMEMBER THAT SCIENCE IS NOT A TOOL FOR CONFIRMING BUT FOR TESTING HYPOTHESES.
On 1/12/2014 I published a post in which I offered to give lectures to students of alternative medicine:
Getting good and experienced lecturers for courses is not easy. Having someone who has done more research than most working in the field and who is internationally known, might therefore be a thrill for students and an image-boosting experience of colleges. In the true Christmas spirit, I am today making the offer of being of assistance to the many struggling educational institutions of alternative medicine .
A few days ago, I tweeted about my willingness to give free lectures to homeopathic colleges (so far without response). Having thought about it a bit, I would now like to extend this offer. I would be happy to give a free lecture to the students of any educational institution of alternative medicine.
I did not think that this would create much interest – and I was right: only the ANGLO-EUROPEAN COLLEGE OF CHIROPRACTIC has so far hoisted me on my own petard and, after some discussion (see comment section of the original post) hosted me for a lecture. Several people seem keen on knowing how this went; so here is a brief report.
I was received, on 14/1/2015, with the utmost kindness by my host David Newell. We has a coffee and a chat and then it was time to start the lecture. The hall was packed with ~150 students and the same number was listening in a second lecture hall to which my talk was being transmitted.
We had agreed on the title CHIROPRACTIC: FALLACIES AND FACTS. So, after telling the audience about my professional background, I elaborated on 7 fallacies:
- Appeal to tradition
- Appeal to authority
- Appeal to popularity
- Subluxation exists
- Spinal manipulation is effective
- Spinal manipulation is safe
- Ad hominem attack
Numbers 3, 5 and 6 were dealt with in more detail than the rest. The organisers had asked me to finish by elaborating on what I perceive as the future challenges of chiropractic; so I did:
- Stop happily promoting bogus treatments
- Denounce obsolete concepts like ‘subluxation’
- Clarify differences between chiros, osteos and physios
- Start a culture of critical thinking
- Take action against charlatans in your ranks
- Stop attacking everyone who voices criticism
I ended by pointing out that the biggest challenge, in my view, was to “demonstrate with rigorous science which chiropractic treatments demonstrably generate more good than harm for which condition”.
We had agreed that my lecture would be followed by half an hour of discussion; this period turned out to be lively and had to be extended to a full hour. Most questions initially came from the tutors rather than the students, and most were polite – I had expected much more aggression.
In his email thanking me for coming to Bournemouth, David Newell wrote about the event: The general feedback from staff and students was one of relief that you possessed only one head, :-). I hope you may have felt the same about us. You came over as someone who had strong views, a fair amount of which we disagreed with, but that presented them in a calm, informative and courteous manner as we did in listening and discussing issues after your talk. I think everyone enjoyed the questions and debate and felt that some of the points you made were indeed fair critique of what the profession may need to do, to secure a more inclusive role in the health care arena.
My own impression of the day is that some of my messages were not really understood, that some of the questions, including some from the tutors, seemed like coming from a different planet, and that people were more out to teach me than to learn from my talk. One overall impression that I took home from that day is that, even in this college which prides itself of being open to scientific evidence and unimpressed by chiropractic fundamentalism, students are strangely different from other health care professionals. The most tangible aspect of this is the openly hostile attitude against drug therapies voiced during the discussion by some students.
The question I always ask myself after having invested a lot of time in preparing and delivering a lecture is: WAS IT WORTH IT? In the case of this lecture, I think the answer is YES. With 300 students present, I am fairly confident that I did manage to stimulate a tiny bit of critical thinking in a tiny percentage of them. The chiropractic profession needs this badly!
I know, it’s not really original to come up with the 10000th article on “10 things…” – but you will have to forgive me, I read so many of these articles over the holiday period that I can’t help but jump on the already over-crowded bandwagon and compose yet another one.
So, here are 10 things which could, if implemented, bring considerable improvement in 2015 to my field of inquiry, alternative medicine.
- Consumers need to get better at acting as bull shit (BS) detectors. Let’s face it, much of what we read or hear about this subject is utter BS. Yet consumers frequently lap up even the worst drivel like it were some source of deep wisdom. They could save themselves so much money, if they learnt to be just a little bit more critical.
- Dr Oz should focus on being a heart surgeon. His TV show has been demonstrated far too often to be promoting dangerous quackery. Yet as a heart surgeon, he actually might do some good.
- Journalists ought to remember that they have a job that extends well beyond their ambition to sell copy. They have a responsibility to inform the public truthfully and responsibly.
- Book publishers should abstain from churning out book after book that does little else but mislead the public about alternative medicine in a way that all to often is dangerous to the readers’ health. The world does not need the 1000th book repeating nonsense on detox, wellness etc.!
- Alternative practitioners must realise that claiming that therapy x cures condition y is not just slightly over-optimistic (or based on ‘years of experience’); if the claim is not based on sound evidence, it is what most people would call an outright lie.
- Proponents of alternative medicine should learn that it is neither fair nor productive to fiercely attack everyone personally who disagrees with their enthusiasm for this or that form of alternative medicine. In fact, it merely highlights the acute lack of rational arguments.
- Researchers of alternative medicine have to remember how important it is to think critically – an uncritical scientist is at best a contradiction in terms and at worst a pseudo-scientist who is likely to cause harm.
- Authorities should amass the courage, the political power and the financial means of going after those charlatans who ruthlessly exploit the public by making a fast and easy buck on the gullibility of consumers. Only if there is the likelihood of hefty fines will we see a meaningful decrease in the current epidemic of alternative health fraud.
- Politicians should realise that alternative medicine is not just a trivial subject with which one might win votes, if one issues platitudes to please the majority; alternative medicine is used by so many people that it has become an important public health issue.
- Prince Charles need to learn how to control himself and abstain from meddling in health politics by using every conceivable occasion to promote what he thinks is ‘integrated medicine’ but which, in fact, can easily be disclosed to be quackery.
As you see, my list almost instantly turned into a wish-list, and the big questions that follow from it are:
- How could we increase the likelihood of these wishes to come true?
- And would there be anything left of alternative medicine, if all of these wishes miraculously became true in 2015?
I do not pretend to have the answers, but I do feel strongly that a healthy dose of critical thinking in all levels of education – from kindergartens to schools, from colleges to universities etc. – would be a good and necessary starting point.
I know, my list is not just a wish list, it also is a wishful thinking list. It would be hopelessly naïve to assume that major advances will be made in 2015. I am realistic, sometimes even quite pessimistic, about progress in alternative medicine. But this does not mean that I or anyone else should just give up. 2015 will be a year where at least one thing is certain: you will see me continuing me my fight for reason, critical analysis, rational debate and good evidence – and that’s a promise!
Few subjects make chiropractors more uneasy than a discussion of the safety of their spinal manipulations. Many chiropractors flatly deny that there are any risks at all. However, the evidence seems to tell a different story.
The purpose of a new review was to summarise the literature for cases of adverse events in infants and children treated by chiropractors or other manual therapists, identifying treatment type and if a preexisting pathology was present. English language, peer-reviewed journals and non-peer-reviewed case reports discussing adverse events (ranging from minor to serious) were systematically searched from inception of the relevant searchable bibliographic databases through March 2014. Articles not referring to infants or children were excluded.
Thirty-one articles met the selection criteria. A total of 12 articles reporting 15 serious adverse events were found. Three deaths occurred under the care of various providers (1 physical therapist, 1 unknown practitioner, and 1 craniosacral therapist) and 12 serious injuries were reported (7 chiropractors/doctors of chiropractic, 1 medical practitioner, 1 osteopath, 2 physical therapists, and 1 unknown practitioner). High-velocity, extension, and rotational spinal manipulation was reported in most cases, with 1 case involving forcibly applied craniosacral dural tension and another involving use of an adjusting instrument. Underlying preexisting pathology was identified in a majority of the cases.
The authors concluded that published cases of serious adverse events in infants and children receiving chiropractic, osteopathic, physiotherapy, or manual medical therapy are rare. The 3 deaths that have been reported were associated with various manual therapists; however, no deaths associated with chiropractic care were found in the literature to date. Because underlying preexisting pathology was associated in a majority of reported cases, performing a thorough history and examination to exclude anatomical or neurologic anomalies before applying any manual therapy may further reduce adverse events across all manual therapy professions.
This review is a valuable addition to our knowledge about the risks of spinal manipulations. My own review summarised 26 deaths after chiropractic manipulations. In several of these instances, the age of the patient had not been reported. Therefore the above conclusion (no deaths associated with chiropractic) seems a little odd.
The following text is a shortened version of the discussion of my review which, I think, addresses most of the pertinent issues.
… numerous deaths have been associated with chiropractic. Usually high-velocity, short-lever thrusts of the upper spine with rotation are implicated. They are believed to cause vertebral arterial dissection in predisposed individuals which, in turn, can lead to a chain of events including stroke and death. Many chiropractors claim that, because arterial dissection can also occur spontaneously, causality between the chiropractic intervention and arterial dissection is not proven. However, when carefully evaluating the known facts, one does arrive at the conclusion that causality is at least likely. Even if it were merely a remote possibility, the precautionary principle in healthcare would mean that neck manipulations should be considered unsafe until proven otherwise. Moreover, there is no good evidence for assuming that neck manipulation is an effective therapy for any medical condition. Thus, the risk-benefit balance for chiropractic neck manipulation fails to be positive.
Reliable estimates of the frequency of vascular accidents are prevented by the fact that underreporting is known to be substantial. In a survey of UK neurologists, for instance, under-reporting of serious complications was 100%. Those cases which are published often turn out to be incomplete. Of 40 case reports of serious adverse effects associated with spinal manipulation, nine failed to provide any information about the clinical outcome. Incomplete reporting of outcomes might therefore further increase the true number of fatalities.
This review is focussed on deaths after chiropractic, yet neck manipulations are, of course, used by other healthcare professionals as well. The reason for this focus is simple: chiropractors are more frequently associated with serious manipulation-related adverse effects than osteopaths, physiotherapists, doctors or other professionals. Of the 40 cases of serious adverse effects mentioned above, 28 can be traced back to a chiropractor and none to a osteopath. A review of complications after spinal manipulations by any type of healthcare professional included three deaths related to osteopaths, nine to medical practitioners, none to a physiotherapist, one to a naturopath and 17 to chiropractors. This article also summarised a total of 265 vascular accidents of which 142 were linked to chiropractors. Another review of complications after neck manipulations published by 1997 included 177 vascular accidents, 32 of which were fatal. The vast majority of these cases were associated with chiropractic and none with physiotherapy. The most obvious explanation for the dominance of chiropractic is that chiropractors routinely employ high-velocity, short-lever thrusts on the upper spine with a rotational element, while the other healthcare professionals use them much more sparingly.
[REFERENCES FOR THE ABOVE STATEMENTS CAN BE FOUND IN MY REVIEW]Naturopathy can be defined as ‘an eclectic system of health care that uses elements of complementary and conventional medicine to support and enhance self-healing processes’. This basically means that naturopaths employ treatments based on those therapeutic options that are seen as natural, e. g. herbs, water, exercise, diet, fresh air, heat and cold – but occasionally also acupuncture, homeopathy and manual therapies. If you are tempted to see a naturopath, you might want to consider the following 7 points:
- In many countries, naturopathy is not a protected title; this means your naturopaths may have some training but this is not obligatory. Some medical doctors also practice naturopathy, and in some countries there are ‘doctors of naturopathy’ (these practitioners tend to see themselves as primary care physicians but they have not been to medical school).
- Naturopathy is steeped in the obsolete concept of vitalism which has been described as the belief that “living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things.”
- While there is some evidence to suggest that some of the treatments used by naturopaths are effective for treating some conditions, this is by no means the case for all of the treatments in question.
- Naturopathy is implicitly based on the assumption that natural means safe. This notion is clearly wrong and misleading: not all the treatments used by naturopaths are strictly speaking natural, and very few are totally free of risks.
- Many naturopaths advise their patients against conventional treatments such as vaccines or antibiotics.
- Naturopaths tend to believe they can cure all or most diseases. Consequently many of the therapeutic claims for naturopathy found on the Internet and elsewhere are dangerously over-stated.
- The direct risks of naturopathy depend, of course, on the modality used; some of them can be considerable. The indirect risks of naturopathy can be even more serious and are mostly due to naturopathic treatments replacing more effective conventional therapies in cases of severe illness.
