Saturday, July 4, 2009

Safety of chiropractic interventions: a systematic review


^^Interesting story to go with the above picture^^

Please note, this is far from an attack on the chiropractic profession. I know and respect a number of chiro's and look forward to the positive interplay between our two professions through my career.

McMaster Plus has a great FREE service called Rehab+ where you can subscribe to topics of interest. The interaction and unique relationship between Physical Therapists and chiropractors is one that appears very often especially in outpatient therapy practices. This systematic review throws out a pretty significant statistic that made me cringe a little when reading it:
The frequency of adverse events varied between 33% and 60.9%, and the frequency of serious adverse events varied between 5 strokes/100,000 manipulations to 1.46 serious adverse events/10,000,000 manipulations and 2.68 deaths/10,000,000 manipulations.

Physical Therapy on the other hand has been shown to be much more cost-effective and safer than many alternatives including chiropractic. One example of this is how much malpractice insurance I receive for the low amount I pay... are you ready for this... $3 million in coverage for about $175.00 a year. Some (if not most) doctors pay 6 figures a year. I wonder how much Chiropractors pay?


Addendum to original post: I also stumbled upon this website: http://www.chiropracticstrokeawarenessblog.org/

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Biased report. Chiropractors have the lowest malpractice of any doctor type and the safest record. You think millions of people are "fooled" by it? Check the Consumer Reports survey of 14000 of their subscribers who rated chiropractic #1. Let's work together for the patients, not be enemies.

Mike Simone said...

I'm married to a PT. She doesn't diagnose. Failure to diagnose is the most common malpractice issue for a chiropractor. Even with that they do pay a pittance of what any other doctoral level health care provider pays.

Unknown said...

What makes this a biased report? An unfavorable conclusion does not mean the methodology was flawed. That said, I am all for promoting health via multidisciplinary approaches. That is why I think the comparative effectiveness work being done right now is so incredibly important! The state of the art is being tested. It's an exciting time.

Dr.Ed said...

Of course comparing Chiropractic and Physical Therapy is apples and oranges. We do not have the same objectives, which is why I regularly refer to P.T.s even while my practice members receive the best CHIROPRACTIC care on the planet. Educate yourself about the profound differences and then we can have an intelligent dialogue.
If you are coming across Chiropractors that are practicing physical therapy, then maybe you should speak with a different Chiropractor. I can see how this could be confusing.
Sincerely and respectfully,
Dr. Edward Beck
Advanced Chiropractic Center
www.HealingPotential.com