Chiropractic Neck Manipulations in the News

The neck is turned and the arteries are stressed

I have been following the story of a woman who is in the intensive care unit after a visit to her Chiropractor. She just graduated from Georgia Southern University with a masters degree in chemistry and biology.

It's unclear if Jensen's injury occurred before or during her appointment with herChiropractor Many of the same details and quotes were repeated in the news stories. I pieced it together after reading everything I could get my hands on.

She went to a Chiropractor in June. One news story named him. I won't He said that he can't reveal patient information because of the rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. She attributed her visit to the Chiropractor to her long periods of study for exams. One report says she went for treatment. The exact sequence of events is not clear, but Caitlyn's mother says the Chiropractor phoned her to tell her he had called the police because she had a bad reaction to his treatment.

She had a cardiac arrest and was not breathing for 10 minutes.

She was resuscitated by the surgeons. They found dissections of 4 arteries in the neck and repaired some of the tears. There is a tear in the inner lining of the arteries. There is a risk of blood clot, interference with blood flow, and strokes when there is a build up of blood. It sounds like all four main arteries in the neck had dissections.

She is unable to speak and can only wiggle her left toes and blink her eyes after a month. She had a traumatic brain injury as well. There are regular updates on the family's page on the Go Fund Me website. Over $60,000 has been raised for her treatment.

Doctors believed that the cause of the dissections was due to neck manipulation.

There is a risk of stroke with neck manipulation.

Samuel Homola wrote an excellent review of the topic. There was a study that Jann reported on.

“adds to the growing body of evidence that neck manipulation is an independent risk factor for cervical arterial dissection and stroke. The authors conclude:

Based on our findings, all patients who visited chiropractors for cervical spine manipulation should be informed of the potential risks and of the need to seek immediate medical assistance should symptoms suggestive of dissection or stroke occur during or after manipulation.”

In fact, they suggested that patients might well avoid chiropractors altogether:

“Until the actual level of risk from chiropractic manipulation is known, patients with neck pain may be better served by equally effective passive physical therapy exercise.”

Keep in mind that chiropractors manipulate necks to correct “chiropractic subluxations” that have never been shown to exist.

It is interesting to read all the comments after the online articles were written. Patients who are satisfied with what chiropractors have done to help them often claim dramatic cures from treatments that have not been proven to work. Patients who are dissatisfied with their treatment complain that it made them worse. It is said that neck manipulation can cause strokes, but that it is extremely rare, with an estimated 0.05 to 1.46 strokes in every 10 million neck manipulations. They think the small risk is acceptable since they think neck manipulation works. Other Chiropractor don't think there is a risk. They say that these patients had dissections in the arteries of their neck and that's why they had neck pain. It seems to me that the worst thing you could do for a patient with a tear in a vertebral artery is to put the patient in a neckbrace.

Predicting which patients are at risk of stroke is difficult. It's not possible for chiropractors to diagnose or treat a dissection of the vertebral arteries. Since physical therapists are able to do everything a Chiropractor does, there is no place for Chiropractor in modern medicine. They base their treatments on scientific evidence.

In the so-called beauty parlor strokes where the neck is hyperextended for a hair product, Chiropractor remind us that there is a chance of a dissection in the vertebral arteries. Spontaneous dissections occurring simultaneously in all 4 neck arteries are so rare that they warrant a case report where a stroke was caused by vomiting.

With the exception of back pain, it has not been shown to be effective for any medical conditions. The risk of stroke from neck manipulation is uncertain, but a significant risk can't be ruled out, and there may be massive under-reporting because chiropractors are not required to report strokes.

The risk/benefit ratio isn't good.

Since the HVLA neck manipulation has not been proven effective for anything, and since significant risk can't be ruled out, accurate evaluation of the risk/benefit ratio is impossible. The course of action would be to avoid neck manipulation and use other treatments that have been proven effective.