chiropractic
A recent article from THE CHIROPRACTIC REPORT entitled ‘Media Criticism – Whether and How to Respond’ has caught my attention. It provides detailed and, in my view, quite remarkable advice to chiropractors as to how they should react to criticism. Here is an excerpt:
…the easiest media comment to challenge is one that makes an absolute claim – for example Salzberg’s claim that the practice of chiropractic is “highly dubious.” It also means that an effective response should usually not be absolute – claiming for example that chiropractic care can cure, or a specific chiropractic treatment is proven effective for, a specific condition.
Let’s explore this with an example. In 2008 a British journalist, Simon Singh, while promoting a new book he had co-authored that was heavily critical of chiropractic and complementary and alternative medicine in general, wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper in which he claimed that “there is not a jot of evidence” that chiropractic treatment can help children with “colic, sleeping and feeding problems . . . and prolonged crying.” In other words, a black and white claim.
There was and is evidence. Singh was wrong. How might you respond to this? Here are your options for reply, from the outspoken to the restrained:
a. Chiropractic is proven effective for the cure of infantile colic.
b. Spinal manipulation is proven effective for the cure of infantile colic
c. Manual treatments are proven effective for the cure of infantile colic
d. Chiropractic/spinal manipulation/ manual therapies may be effective in reducing the symptoms of infantile colic.
e. Where spinal joint dysfunction/subluxation is found, chiropractic/spinal manipulation/manual therapies may be effective in reducing abnormal and incessant crying in infants medically diagnosed as having infantile colic
f. Chiropractic care has a central focus of assessing and correcting spinal joint dysfunction/subluxation and its biomechanical and physiological effects, and where these are addressed many symptoms may be reduced including those associated with infantile colic.
The first three options are as black and white as Singh’s statement, and are not supported by the evidence. Some studies say yes, some no. All the other options, which have appropriate qualifiers and shades of gray, are supported by sound evidence.
Much of that evidence is referred to and referenced in the March 2010 issue of this Report, available online at www.chiropracticreport.com/pastissues. To answer Singh effectively one only has to produce some of the good quality research and question how he can be credible when he says “there is not a jot of evidence”.
With respect to evidence, in this context that means evidence published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. You may decide to comment on one or more anecdotal case reports from your practice to give your response greater human interest, but this will mean nothing unless supported by higher levels of published evidence.
Am I the only one to find this remarkable?
Am I wrong in interpreting this as detailed instructions to mislead the public?
Are these instructions not merely advice to defend chiropractic commercial interests at the expense of public health?
How can this be ethical?
How often have we heard it on this blog and elsewhere?
- chiropractic is progressing,
- chiropractors are no longer adhering to their obsolete concepts and bizarre beliefs,
- chiropractic is fast becoming evidence-based,
- subluxation is a thing of the past.
American chiropractors wanted to find out to what extent these assumptions are true and collected data from chiropractic students enrolled in colleges throughout North America. The stated purpose of their study is to investigate North American chiropractic students’ opinions concerning professional identity, role and future.
A 23-item cross-sectional electronic questionnaire was developed. A total of 7,455 chiropractic students from 12 North American English-speaking chiropractic colleges were invited to complete the survey. Survey items encompassed demographics, evidence-based practice, chiropractic identity and setting, and scope of practice. Data were collected and descriptive statistical analyses were performed.
A total of 1,243 questionnaires were electronically submitted. This means the response rate was 16.7%. Most respondents agreed (34.8%) or strongly agreed (52.2%) that it is important for chiropractors to be educated in evidence-based practice. A majority agreed (35.6%) or strongly agreed (25.8%) the emphasis of chiropractic intervention is to eliminate vertebral subluxations/vertebral subluxation complexes. A large number of respondents (55.2%) were not in favor of expanding the scope of the chiropractic profession to include prescribing medications with appropriate advanced training. Most respondents estimated that chiropractors should be considered mainstream health care practitioners (69.1%). About half of all respondents (46.8%) felt that chiropractic research should focus on the physiological mechanisms of chiropractic adjustments.
The authors of this paper concluded that the chiropractic students in this study showed a preference for participating in mainstream health care, report an exposure to evidence-based practice, and desire to hold to traditional chiropractic theories and practices. The majority of students would like to see an emphasis on correction of vertebral subluxation, while a larger percent found it is important to learn about evidence-based practice. These two key points may seem contradictory, suggesting cognitive dissonance. Or perhaps some students want to hold on to traditional theory (e.g., subluxation-centered practice) while recognizing the need for further research to fully explore these theories. Further research on this topic is needed.
What should we make of these findings? The answer clearly must be NOT A LOT.
- the response rate was dismal,
- the questionnaire was not validated
- there seems to be little critical evaluation or discussion of the findings.
If anything, these findings seem to suggest that chiropractors want to join evidence based medicine, but on their own terms and without giving up their bogus beliefs, concept and practices. They seem to want the cake and eat it, in other words. The almost inevitable result of such a development would be that real medicine becomes diluted with quackery.
Much has been written on this blog about progress in the area of chiropractic practice and research. But where is the evidence for progress? I did a little search and one of the first sites I stumbled across was this one which is full to bursting with bogus claims. This cannot be what chiropractors call ‘progress’, I thought.
Determined to find real progress, I continued searching and found THE FOUNDATION FOR CHIROPRACTIC PROGRESS. Great, I thought, an organisation and a website entirely devoted to the very subject I was looking for. Consequently, I studied the information provided here in some detail. What follows are excerpts from the site:
Chiropractic care is a health option that has proven beneficial for a multitude of health conditions, along with in the practice of achieving optimal wellness. It is essential for those unaware of chiropractic care to be adequately informed, so they too can experience the benefits that over 60,000 practicing doctors of chiropractic in the U.S. provide to their patients daily. Established in 2003, the not-for-profit Foundation for Chiropractic Progress (F4CP) aims to educate the public about the many benefits associated with chiropractic care.On behalf of the F4CP, I invite you to tour this site and learn more about this effective form of treatment.
Kind regards,
Kent Greenawalt
Chairman | Foundation for Chiropractic Progress
THIS WAS A STRANGE INTRODUCTION, I THOUGHT; BUT UNDETERRED I READ ON:
Parents of Colicky Infants Turn to Chiropractic Care
For those parents who never imagined their ailing babies and toddlers could be helped by chiropractic care, it may be time for some rethinking.New mom Jean, a 31-year-old speech therapist from New Jersey, became an advocate after enlisting the help of her own chiropractor to treat her colicky infant girl, Emma. After having had what she says was “no luck” with the usual ways of alleviating colic symptoms – including giving Emma children’s probiotics daily – one appointment with board-certified in chiropractic pediatrics Dr. Lora Tanis produced an immediate difference.
Concussions Among Athletes
A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head that can change the way the brain functions. Symptoms include dizziness, instability and confusion.
Using methods that rely on brain-based, non-invasive, drugfree approaches — like chiropractic
care and physical rehab — can help re-establish balance and maximal brain and nervous system functionality.
News of Health – Improving Military Health Care
Retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Becky Halstead—the first woman in U.S. history to command in combat at the strategic level—is speaking out on the value of chiropractic care for the nation’s military men and women.
Good Health
With the epidemic now estimated to be costing the nation $147 billion annually, it’s a question that’s very much on the minds of health experts. And many, including lifestyle guru Shea Vaughn, are citing chiropractic care as a crucial part of overall wellness programs.
FEELING A LITTLE DISAPPOINTED, I STOPPED READING AND THOUGHT
PROGRESS INDEED !!!
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!
– Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a condition which affects so many people that it represents a huge burden to individual patients’ suffering as well as to society in terms of loss of work time and increased economic cost. The number of therapies that have been claimed to be effective for CLBP can hardly be counted. Two of the most common treatments are spinal manipulation and exercise.
The purpose of this systematic review was to determine the effectiveness of spinal manipulation vs prescribed exercise for patients diagnosed with CLBP. Only RCTs that compared head-to-head spinal manipulation to an exercise group were included in this review.
A search of the current literature was conducted using a keyword process in CINAHL, Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials Database, Medline, and Embase. The searches included studies available up to August 2014. Studies were included based on PICOS criteria 1) individuals with CLBP defined as lasting 12 weeks or longer; 2) spinal manipulation performed by a health care practitioner; 3) prescribed exercise for the treatment of CLBP and monitored by a health care practitioner; 4) measurable clinical outcomes for reducing pain, disability or improving function; 5) randomized controlled trials. The methodological quality of all included articles was determined using the criteria developed and used by the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro).
Only three RCTs met the inclusion criteria of this systematic review. The outcomes used in these studies included Disability Indexes, Pain Scales and function improvement scales. One RCT found spinal manipulation to be more effective than exercise, and the results of another RCT indicated the reverse. The third RCT found both interventions offering equal effects in the long term.
The author concluded that there is no conclusive evidence that clearly favours spinal manipulation or exercise as more effective in treatment of CLBP. More studies are needed to further explore which intervention is more effective.
Whenever there are uncounted treatments for a given condition, one has to ask oneself whether they are all similarly effective or equally ineffective. The present review does unfortunately not answer this question, but I fear the latter might be more true than the former.
Considering how much money we spend on treating CLBP, it is truly surprising to see that just three RCTs are available comparing two of the most commonly used treatments for this condition. Equally surprising is the fact that we simply cannot tell, on the basis of these data, which of the two therapies is more effective.
What consequences should we draw from this information. Obviously we need more high quality trials. But what should we do in the meantime?
Whenever two treatments are equally effective (or, in this case, perhaps equally ineffective?), we must consider other important criteria such as safety and cost. Regular chiropractic care (chiropractors use spinal manipulation on almost every patient, while osteopaths and physiotherapists employ it less frequently) is neither cheap nor free of serious adverse effects such as strokes; regular exercise has none of these disadvantages. In view of these undeniable facts, it is hard not to come up with anything other than the following recommendation: until new and compelling evidence becomes available, exercise ought to be preferred over spinal manipulation as a treatment of CLBP – and consequently consulting a chiropractor should not be the first choice for CLBP patients.
The very first article on a subject related to alternative medicine with a 2015 date that I came across is a case-report. I am afraid it will not delight our chiropractic friends who tend to deny that their main therapy can cause serious problems.
In this paper, US doctors tell the story of a young woman who developed headache, vomiting, diplopia, dizziness, and ataxia following a neck manipulation by her chiropractor. A computed tomography scan of the head was ordered and it revealed an infarct in the inferior half of the left cerebellar hemisphere and compression of the fourth ventricle causing moderately severe, acute obstructive hydrocephalus. Magnetic resonance angiography showed severe narrowing and low flow in the intracranial segment of the left distal vertebral artery. The patient was treated with mannitol and a ventriculostomy. Following these interventions, she made an excellent functional recovery.
The authors of the case-report draw the following conclusions: This report illustrates the potential hazards associated with neck trauma, including chiropractic manipulation. The vertebral arteries are at risk for aneurysm formation and/or dissection, which can cause acute stroke.
I can already hear the counter-arguments: this is not evidence, it’s an anecdote; the evidence from the Cassidy study shows there is no such risk!
Indeed the Cassidy study concluded that vertebral artery accident (VBA) stroke is a very rare event in the population. The increased risks of VBA stroke associated with chiropractic and primary care physician visits is likely due to patients with headache and neck pain from VBA dissection seeking care before their stroke. We found no evidence of excess risk of VBA stroke associated chiropractic care compared to primary care. That, of course, was what chiropractors longed to hear (and it is the main basis for their denial of risk) – so much so that Cassidy et al published the same results a second time (most experts feel that this is a violation of publication ethics).
But repeating arguments does not make them more true. What we should not forget is that the Cassidy study was but one of several case-control studies investigating this subject. And the totality of all such studies does not deny an association between neck manipulation and stroke.
Much more important is the fact that a re-analysis of the Cassidy data found that prior studies grossly misclassified cases of cervical dissection and mistakenly dismissed a causal association with manipulation. The authors of this new paper found a classification error of cases by Cassidy et al and they re-analysed the Cassidy data, which reported no association between spinal manipulation and cervical artery dissection (odds ratio [OR] 5 1.12, 95% CI .77-1.63). These re-calculated results reveal an odds ratio of 2.15 (95% CI.98-4.69). For patients less than 45 years of age, the OR was 6.91 (95% CI 2.59-13.74). The authors of the re-analysis conclude as follows: If our estimates of case misclassification are applicable outside the VA population, ORs for the association between SMT exposure and CAD are likely to be higher than those reported using the Rothwell/Cassidy strategy, particularly among younger populations. Future epidemiologic studies of this association should prioritize the accurate classification of cases and SMT exposure.
I think they are correct; but my conclusion of all this would be more pragmatic and much simpler: UNTIL WE HAVE CONVINCING EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, WE HAVE TO ASSUME THAT CHIROPRACTIC NECK MANIPULATION CAN CAUSE A STROKE.
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]How many times have we heard from practitioners of alternative medicine, particularly chiropractors, that their patients are more severely ill than those of conventional clinicians. The claim is usually that they have tried all that conventional medicine can offer and eventually, as a last resort, they turn to the alternatives.
But is this true? If so, it would explain why these patients do no better or even worse than those treated conventionally.
Here is a new article that goes some way in addressing these issues.
For this study, Danish chiropractors and general practitioners recruited adult patients seeking care for low back pain (LBP). Extensive baseline questionnaires were obtained and descriptive analyses were performed to define the differences between the two populations.
Questionnaires were returned from 934 patients in chiropractic practice and 319 patients from general practice. Four out of five patients had previous episodes, one-fourth were on sick leave, and the LBP considerably limited daily activities. The general practice patients were slightly older and less educated, more often female, and generally worse on all disease-related parameters than chiropractic patients. All the disease specific parameters showed a statistically significant difference between general and chiropractic practice. Patients in general practice were generally more severely affected. They had higher pain intensity (mainly for leg pain), longer pain duration, more previous episodes, more sick leave, more activity limitation on the disability scale, slightly higher level of depression, slightly more fear-avoidance beliefs, and a poorer self-reported general health. All these differences were statistically significant.
The authors concluded that LBP in primary care was recurrent, causing sick leave and activity limitations. There were clear differences between the chiropractic and general practice populations in this study.
I know, I know: these findings are from Denmark and therefore they cannot be generalised to other countries. However, the authors point out that similar findings have been reported from the US. Furthermore the observations relate to chiropractors and must not be applied to other alternative practitioners. Nevertheless they do show that, in this specific scenario, patients opting for the alternative are not more but less severely ill.
The next time an alternative practitioner claims ‘my patients have worse outcomes because they are sicker’, I will insist on seeing the evidence before I believe it.
Adverse events have been reported extensively following chiropractic. About 50% of patients suffer side-effects after seeing a chiropractor. The majority of these events are mild, transitory and self-limiting. However, chiropractic spinal manipulations, particularly those of the upper spine, have also been associated with very serious complications; several hundred such cases have been reported in the medical literature and, as there is no monitoring system to record these instances, this figure is almost certainly just the tip of a much larger iceberg.
Despite these facts, little is known about patient filed compensation claims related to the chiropractic consultation process. The aim of a new study was to describe claims reported to the Danish Patient Compensation Association and the Norwegian System of Compensation to Patients related to chiropractic from 2004 to 2012.
All finalized compensation claims involving chiropractors reported to one of the two associations between 2004 and 2012 were assessed for age, gender, type of complaint, decisions and appeals. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the study population.
338 claims were registered in Denmark and Norway between 2004 and 2012 of which 300 were included in the analysis. 41 (13.7%) were approved for financial compensation. The most frequent complaints were worsening of symptoms following treatment (n = 91, 30.3%), alleged disk herniations (n = 57, 19%) and cases with delayed referral (n = 46, 15.3%). A total financial payment of €2,305,757 (median payment €7,730) were distributed among the forty-one cases with complaints relating to a few cases of cervical artery dissection (n = 11, 5.7%) accounting for 88.7% of the total amount.
The authors concluded that chiropractors in Denmark and Norway received approximately one compensation claim per 100.000 consultations. The approval rate was low across the majority of complaint categories and lower than the approval rates for general practitioners and physiotherapists. Many claims can probably be prevented if chiropractors would prioritize informing patients about the normal course of their complaint and normal benign reactions to treatment.
Despite its somewhat odd conclusion (it is not truly based on the data), this is a unique article; I am not aware that other studies of chiropractic compensation claims exist in an European context. The authors should be applauded for their work. Clearly we need more of the same from other countries and from all professions doing manipulative therapies.
In the discussion section of their article, the authors point out that Norwegian and Danish chiropractors both deliver approximately two million consultations annually. They receive on average 42 claims combined suggesting roughly one claim per 100.000 consultations. By comparison, Danish statistics show that in the period 2007–2012 chiropractors, GPs and physiotherapists (+ occupational therapists) received 1.76, 1.32 and 0.52 claims per 100.000 consultations, respectively with approval rates of 13%, 25% and 21%, respectively. During this period these three groups were reimbursed on average €58,000, €29,000 and €18,000 per approved claim, respectively.
These data are preliminary and their interpretation might be a matter of debate. However, one thing seems clear enough: contrary to what we frequently hear from apologists, chiropractors do receive a considerable amount of compensation claims which means many patients do get harmed.
