Blue Man
I see you continue to avoid identifying yourself, your profession, or your interest in this matter, other than being the manager of a biased EBM website. How cowardly of you.
Like your forefather (Dr. Steven Barrett) you avoid responding to revealing questions about your stake in the matter, while dissembling with the same old stale paranoia rants about how chiropractic is a dangerous procedure.
Meanwhile, you ignore the facts:
1. People come to chiropractors because they suffer from neck pain, headaches or low back pain. They have been doing this in increasing numbers, even though folks like you try to paint my profession as a quasi-religion. Much is made of DD Palmer's employment history, as though the fact that he had been a greengrocer automatically invalidated his ability to observe, think or create. Again, I ask YOU...what is your profession and training...does your training place you above this humble "fish peddler"? Are you other than an online dilettante with a hunger for attention? Inquiring minds want to know.
2. If this same group of people were forced to seek "evidence-based" medical care for their complaints, here's what they would be offered:
non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
muscle relaxants
opioids
antidepressants, and eventual
spinal surgery
A very recent meta-analysis by the Dutch Institute for Health Care Improvement, and published in the European Spine Journal reviewed 17 randomized controlled trials for pain treatments: NSAIDs (n = 4), antidepressants (n = 5), and opioids (n = 8). Amazingly, no studies were found for muscle relaxers. Their conclusions were that NSAIDs and opioids “seem to lead to a somewhat higher relief in pain on the short term, as compared to placebo” (or no treatment at all!), “in patients with non-specific chronic low back pain, and that both types of medication show more adverse effects than placebo”. (What an elegant understatement that is!). [1] Even the least-supportive studies on spinal manipulation found that chiropractic care is "at least" as effective as pain meds, while many others find that chiropractic care is orders of magnitude superior to "usual medical management". Our Blog (www dot chiro dot org) is loaded with such studies.
Meanwhile, it has been shown that 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone. The numbers of all NSAID deaths would be overwhelming, yet the scope of this problem is generally under-appreciated in your beloved medical literature. [2]
<HR>
3. A most recent in-depth review, published in the Feb 15, 2008 Spine Journal [3] was completed by members of the Spine Decade Task Force. It reviewed 10 years worth of hospital records, involving 100 million person-years. Those records revealed no increase in vertebral artery dissection risk with chiropractic, compared with medical management, and further stated that “increased risks of VBA stroke associated with chiropractic and PCP visits is likely due to patients with headache and neck pain from VBA dissection seeking care before their stroke.”
I know you have railed against this article, claiming a superior knowledge...but again, what is YOUR training, that you claim to know more (or better) than a vast, interdisciplinary task force organized by the World Health Organization? You claim YOU know better than the Spine Journal, the "bible" of orthopedic surgeons? Hubris, plain and simple.
<HR>
Finally... if chiropractic had ACTUALLY been PROVEN to be dangerous, why would our Malpractice Insurance rates be the LOWEST of any "healing" profession? Do you also claim to know more than the the Insurance Industry?
I would provide direct links to the following supporting articles, but I have not posted here long enough to be permitted to insert URLs into my comments.
Blue Man...you "appear" to be providing an evidence-based opinion, supposedly to protect the public from the predations of my profession.
I am not so sure. Like your forefather, I suspect your primary motivation is self-promotion (who else has the TIME to post thousands of Tweets?).
REFERENCES:
1. A systematic review on the effectiveness of pharmacological interventions for chronic non-specific low-back pain
Eur Spine J. 2011 (Jan); 20 (1): 40–50 ~ FULL TEXT
2. Recent Considerations in Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drug Gastropathy
American Journal of Medicine 1998 (Jul 27); ; 105 (1B): 31S-38S
3. Risk of Vertebrobasilar Stroke and Chiropractic Care: Results of a Population-based Case-control and Case-crossover Study
Spine 2008 (Feb 15); 33 (4 Suppl): S176–183
