Chiropractors - Any good?

Researchers claim that going to a chiropractor to ease back and neck pain has few benefits. Experts from Peninsula Medical School in Devon looked at 26 studies between 2000 and 2005 evaluating the benefits of spinal manipulation for period pain, colic, asthma, allergy and dizziness.

The analysis showed that spinal manipulation is not effective for any condition, just for back pains, having the same effect as conventional treatment.

Professor Edzard Ernst, of the Peninsula Medical School, who collaborated with Peter Canter, stated: "There is little evidence that spinal manipulation is effective in the treatment of any medical condition.
Patients and the public at large perceive regulation as proof of the usefulness of treatment. Yet the findings presented here show a gap and contradiction between the effectiveness of intervention and the evidence."

The British Chiropractic Association had an angry reaction to these recent data, being disappointed of such a "biased" article. "Ernst and Canter have carefully selected negative articles in support of their conclusion that manipulation cannot be recommended as a treatment when national clinical practice guidelines, based on much more and better research than the studies this article has selected, have come to exactly the opposite conclusion," the statement issued by the association wrote.

Spinal manipulation is not without risk. A survey of 323 neurologists working at British hospitals stated that 24 of the respondents had cases of severe nerve damage occurring in patients within 24 hours of spinal manipulation.