Chiropractic Manipulation Risks

I agree that you should check out ANY doctor that you plan on seeing. There is risk to any procedure, regardless of the professional doing it. You can even have problems after a simple teeth cleaning. The fact remains that Chiropractic care is the safest form of natural health care around.

I thought this was a great objective article. I am going to send some of these points and a link out to my patients on our mailing list to read more about the topic.

Hi everyone, ?r?nI am an osteopath trained in the UK and pleased not to be a Dr.. Risk of Cervical spine manipulations ? according to certain review : 1 "chance" out of 1.5m to die from a cervical manipulation (young woman at risk !) . In France you have more chance to die from being struck by a lightning ! risk of dying from complication using NSAID or Paracetamol for a neck or back pain > 500 out of 1m. In the US every year 16000 people die from reactions from painkillers(gastric bleeding and liver intoxication)! I would say that you should practice it (spinal manipulation) only when it is necessary and too often the manipulation is a shortcut. Did you know that a stomach or an anterior tilt of the liver or a Csection scar can lead to restriction in the neck and then give neck pain ? (little test for the practitioner : if your patient complains from a neck pain ask him to rotate his head while sitting, then lift his diaphragm and ask him to rotate his head at the same time. if any change or improvement occurs in the pain or degrees of rotation then no need to manipulate the Cspine the problems comes from beneath the diaphragm! )Many practitioners just "crack" the neck, why ? because the patient keeps coming back ! he finds a bit of relief (2-3 days maybe 1 week) and then the vertebrae is out again. fantastic for the practitionner ! in one month the list of patient is full and so is his wallet ! I have seen many patients who had a neck or upper back problem. They were seeing a Dr "something " up to three times a week for 1 month and the treatment last for 15 min ! the second month was only two treatments a week... ?r?n?r?nI can tell you from being an osteopahic student in the past that when you continuously manipulate the spine , you keep irritating it and making it hypermobile and that is definitively a problem. ?r?n?r?nSo How to choose a good practitionner ? ?r?nTry them !!! choose the one who you have affinity with.?r?n?r?nDo not believe someone who tells you that you need more than one treatment a week (he cares for your wallet)because it takes at least a week to recover from a good treatment. Generally you should not have more than 5 (that is already a lot !) treatments within the next 2 months. ?r?n?r?nThe Title Dr is a Title that brings respect and admiration, it is as well a fantastic commercial tool don't forget ! Personally I prefer to see an open-minded non-Dr than a close-minded Dr.?r?n?r?nDon't be appealed by excessive advertissment and TV add !?r?n?r?nIf the practitioner cares about you he should be with you for at least 30 minutes during the treatment, and the practitioner should not only treat the spine but as well the whole body if he is really "Holistic !"?r?n?r?nIf the practitioner refer to you as a client then again you are wallet with neck, spine and legs. You are a Patient and our duty is to help you.?r?n?r?n?r?nHope this will be helpful?r?nTake care ?r?nPierre

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments.?r?nI wrote this blog post to point out that there is one potentially very serious, albeit rare, risk to manipulation, because patients typically think more of invasive procedures as having risks, and those types of risks are covered quite extensively throughout the articles our site.?r?nThanks again for your helpful comments and for reading this blog - Stephanie