Overheard while out and about…

Yesterday I overheard two  women talking about seeing a doctor for some injury that one of them had recently had.  I didn’t catch the conversation in its entirety so I can’t and don’t want to speculate about the final outcome of their full opinions but the part that I did catch disturbed me greatly.  It was about the advice that one of the woman’s orthopedic doctor gave her about massages/ chiropractic adjustments.  She told her friend that her doctor said that massages and chiropractors where great, unless it is an injury that involves any sort of nerve.  If it is an injury involving a nerve and a chiropractor were to adjust it, you could have a stroke and die. There are many things wrong with this advice but what really makes it hit home is that by giving one person bad advice, it is getting passed around like canon without the patient even questioning the validity of the advice.  The generality of that statement is what gets me.  I’m curious to know if she was fully explained the dangers of taking any medications that the same doctor might have prescribed to her and tell her that “If she takes a pill, and had other underlying conditions, she could die”.  Or that “Anytime I do a surgery of any type, my patient could die on the table from any number of complications”.  These are the sort of things that we (yes, me included) have completely forgotten about.  We all assume that medical doctors are these saintly beings that can do no wrong and are all knowing and have ceased to question them regarding the information they give us.  The information this doctor gave the patient is not completely made up.  There have been cases of patients undergoing complications from having manipulations and, yes, some have died from them.  The chances of this happening are around 1 in 1,000,000.  Yes that is one in a million.  There have also been shown to have no real correlation in the adjustment actually causing the stroke.  In many cases the patient had already been having symptoms of an impending vascular event, and had sought a chiropractor out because the symptoms many times mimic common complaints that normal chiropractic patients seek adjustments for.  You could relate the chances of getting a stroke to walking into a ANY doctors office and getting a stroke and it would probably be higher than the one in a million chances of having an adjustment and getting a stroke.

I am not discounting the knowledge of this doctor and I’m sure that he has helped many people recover from injuries that they would not have been able to without them.  I applaud that the doctor actually recommends doctors of chiropractic at all, many unfortunately would not.  I think that this particular doctor is misinformed when it comes to what doctors of chiropractic actually do, and what we are capable of.  As doctors of chiropractic we are primarily billed as neuro-muscular-skeletal specialists.  This encompasses any muscle in the body innervated by nerves this is connected to the skeletal system.  Can we fix everyone and everything?  Absolutely not.  Can anyone really though?  I think the best approach is a multi-disciplinary methodology of treating patients, which is what is done for the most part.  But it is the aversion of some medical doctors who still feel that chiropractors are not as educated in they might be and are still reluctant to refer to chiropractors when it comes to musculo-skeletal injuries.  Therefore the referral of patients is usually lopsided with chiropractors acknowledging the fact that we cannot treat everything and will refer out to medical doctors.  While most medical doctors will tend to have the mind that if it can’t be cured with a pill or surgery it can’t be cured, or doesn’t exist.

The same day I overheard this conversation I stumbled upon this article about this same subject.  It is a good read but should still be taken with a grain of salt as this website consists of articles written by freelance writers and the article has not been peer reviewed.  The author does cite quotes from research done in a peer reviewed journal though.

Associated Content- The Truth Regarding Chiropractic Manipulation and Stroke 

Disclaimer: The statements made in this article are the opinions of me and me alone with information taken through reading peer reviewed evidence based articles.  I have decided not to cite sources as this is just a blog and not a medical source.  If you would like more information regarding this subject I will be glad to assist you in your quest.  

This entry was posted on 1. December 2009 at 12:56 and is filed under Chiropractic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.