Safety

Adverse Events After Manual Therapy Among Patients Seeking Care for Neck and/or Back Pain

A Randomized Controlled Trial Kari Paanalahti BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2014;15(77) Abstract Background: The safety of the manual treatment techniques such as spinal manipulation has been discussed and there is a need for more information about potential adverse events after manual therapy. The aim of this randomized controlled trial was to investigate differences in occurrence of […]

Cervical Spine Manipulation Risk/Benefit Analysis

Evidence behind the safety and benefit of cervical spine manipulation is explored.  By Ken Johnson, DO and George Pasquarello, DO, FAAO Recently there has been an increasing concern about the safety of cervical spine manipulation Specifically, this concern has centered on devastating negative outcomes such as stroke. Benefits Spinal manipulation has been reviewed in meta-analysis […]

VBA Stroke: Resources for Doctors of Chiropractic

There is growing interest in the association between cervical manipulation and vertebrobasilar artery (VBA) stroke. Historically, opinion rather than fact has often dominated discussions on this topic, even though the incidence of stroke associated with cervical manipulation is very rare and there is a lack of evidence to prove that cervical adjustments can cause a stroke. ACA is sensitive […]

Outcomes of pregnant patients with low back pain undergoing chiropractic treatment

A prospective cohort study with short term, medium term and 1 year follow-up Cynthia K Peterson Chiropractic & Manual Therapies 2014, 22:15 doi:10.1186/2045-709X-22-15 Published: 1 April 2014 Journal Reference Abstract (provisional) Background Low back pain in pregnancy is common and research evidence on the response to chiropractic treatment is limited. The purposes of this study […]

Tissue Damage Markers after a Spinal Manipulation in Healthy Subjects

Disease Markers Volume 2014 (2014), Article ID 815379, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/815379 Tissue Damage Markers after a Spinal Manipulation in Healthy Subjects: A Preliminary Report of a Randomized Controlled Trial A. Achalandabaso Abstract Spinal manipulation (SM) is a manual therapy technique frequently applied to treat musculoskeletal disorders because of its analgesic effects. It is defined by […]

Lumbar Disk Herniations: Another Dragon to Slay

Chiroweb.com By Anthony Rosner, PhD, LLD [Hon.], LLC Along with the noteworthy advances of chiropractic research and documentation over the past 20 years have unfortunately come a number of highly publicized slings and arrows. Many are without sufficient basis, and there are enough to conjure up visions of St. Sebastian. One particularly troublesome impediment is […]

ACA responded to articles on cervical manipulation in The Washington Post and The New York Times 2014

Yesterday, ACA responded to articles on cervical manipulation in The Washington Post and The New York Times with letter to the editor. These responses are available online at: http://www.acatoday.org/record_css.cfm?CID=5403 (The Washington Post) http://www.acatoday.org/record_css.cfm?CID=5404 (The New York Times) ACA has also dedicated a page of its website to discussing this issue with the public – www.acatoday.org/resources.

ACA Responds to Washington Post Article on Neck Manipulation 

1/7/2014 Resources on Chiropractic Safety Available to Doctors of Chiropractic and Patients   The Washington Post yesterday posted on its website an article on neck manipulation and stroke (“How Safe Are the Vigorous Neck Manipulations Done by Chiropractors?”). The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) has drafted a response that will be shared with theWashington Post editors […]

Effect of selected manual therapy interventions for mechanical neck pain on vertebral and internal carotid arterial blood flow and cerebral inflow

Authors Thomas LC1, Rivett DA, Bateman G, Stanwell P, Levi CR. Author information Journal Phys Ther. 2013 Nov;93(11):1563-74. doi: 10.2522/ptj.20120477. Epub 2013 Jun 27. Affiliation Abstract BACKGROUND: Manual therapy of the cervical spine has occasionally been associated with serious adverse events involving compromise of the craniocervical arteries. Ultrasound studies have shown certain neck positions can alter craniocervical arterial blood flow […]

The Quality of Reports on Cervical Arterial Dissection following Cervical Spinal Manipulation

Shari Wynd Abstract Background Cervical artery dissection (CAD) and stroke are serious harms that are sometimes associated with cervical spinal manipulation therapy (cSMT). Because of the relative rarity of these adverse events, studying them prospectively is challenging. As a result, systematic review of reports describing these events offers an important opportunity to better understand the […]

Outcomes of Usual Chiropractic. The OUCH Randomized Controlled Trial of Adverse Events

Outcomes of Usual Chiropractic. The OUCH Randomized Controlled Trial of Adverse Events Study Design. Blinded parallel-group randomized controlled trial. Objective. Establish the frequency and severity of adverse effects from short-term usual chiropractic treatment of the spine when compared with a sham treatment group. Summary of Background Data. Previous studies have demonstrated that adverse events occur […]

Chiropractic and Stroke: Association or Causation?

There is lack of compelling evidence that SMT is causally associated with stroke.

Assessing the risk of stroke from neck manipulation: a systematic review

Haynes MJ Int J Clin Pract. 2012 Oct;66(10):940-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1742-1241.2012.03004.x. Abstract BACKGROUND: Strokes, typically involving vertebral artery dissection, can follow cervical spinal manipulative therapy, and these types of stroke occur rarely. There is disagreement about whether a strong association between neck manipulation and stroke exists. An earlier systematic review found two relevant studies of association […]

Adverse events from spinal manipulation in the pregnant and postpartum periods: a critical review of the literature

Kent Jason Stuber Chiropractic & Manual Therapies 2012, 20:8 Abstract Background The safety of spinal manipulation during pregnancy and the postpartum periods has been a matter of debate among manual therapists. Spinal manipulative therapy during these periods is a commonly performed intervention as musculoskeletal pain is common in these patients. To date there has not been […]

Is chiropractic paediatric care safe? A best evidence topic

Matthew F. Doyle Clinical Chiropractic Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2011, Pages 97–105 Summary Objective To review the literature as to the safety of paediatric chiropractic care and to offer recommendations for congruent consistent terminology use. Design Best Evidence Topic. Methods Formulation of a clinical question based on a patient query. PubMed, Index to Chiropractic […]

The Safety of Cervical Manipulation: Putting Stroke Risk in Perspective, Part 2

By Anthony Rosner, PhD, LLD [Hon.], LLC Dynamic Chiropractic – June 3, 2011, Vol. 29, Issue 12 To date, the assessment options for vertebrobasilar artery risk have significant drawbacks and as a whole have been unable to identify any particular factor that is useful for screening.61-62 Provocation tests in particular are problematic in that in several […]

Spinal Manipulation is Not an Emerging Risk Factor for Stroke Nor is it Major Head/Neck Trauma. Don’t Just Read the Abstract!

Dean L Smith Open Neurol J. 2011; 5: 46–47. Published online May 30, 2011 PubMed Reference Dear Editor, We read with interest the article by Micheli et al. [1] describing the emerging risk factors for cervical artery dissection. In their abstract, the authors’ state, “Other known risks factors for CAD are major head/neck trauma like […]

The Safety of Cervical Manipulation: Putting Stroke Risk in Perspective, Part 1

By Anthony Rosner, PhD, LLD [Hon.], LLC Dynamic Chiropractic – May 20, 2011, Vol. 29, Issue 11 Relative Activity Risks Several studies have attempted to link chiropractic manipulation to adverse events, the most serious and widely studied being strokes following dissections of the vertebral artery.1-6 To begin to shed light on this problem, several retrospective studies against […]

Deaths after chiropractic: a review of published cases

E. Ernst International Journal of Clinical Practice Volume 64, Issue 8, pages 1162–1165, July 2010 Summary Objective:  The aim of this study was to summarise all cases in which chiropractic spinal manipulation was followed by death. Design:  This study is a systematic review of case reports. Methods:  Literature searches in four electronic databases with no […]

Death by Chiropractic: Another Misbegotten Review

Anthony L. Rosner, Ph.D., LL.D.[Hon.], LLC ChiroACCESS The title of one of Edzard Ernst’s most recent articles, “Deaths after chiropractic: A review of published cases”,1 seems to have wasted no time in creating a worst-case scenario, frightening the reader from a profession which has successfully treated patients for 115 years and for which evidence supporting its […]