Almost from its genesis in 1895, the chiropractic profession has been under attack by others in medical fields. However, a federal court proved that most of the criticism was unfounded, calling it an attempt to destroy a competing health care field that was perceived as a threat to the medical monopoly in the United States.

The latest attempt to discredit chiropractic medicine and to discourage people from seeking chiropractic care, some proponents of allopathic medicine continue to disseminate misleading information regarding a possible link between cervical adjustments and strokes.

According to a statement by the World Chiropractic Alliance (WCA), an international advocacy organization representing chiropractors worldwide, such misinformation is a deliberate and unethical scare tactic that would not stand up to critical analysis.

"Even if we restrict our investigation to cervical adjustments-which have been the focus of many of the media and medical attacks-the only reasonable conclusion which can be drawn is that chiropractic adjustments do not pose any significant risk of stroke and are remarkably safe," said Terry A. Rondberg, D.C., president of the WCA and author of "Chiropractic First," a consumer guide to chiropractic medicine.

A stroke-which occurs when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel or artery or when a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain-causes brain cells to die. Approximately 750,000 first ever or recurrent strokes occur each year in the United States and more than 150,000 deaths are directly stroke-related.

The incidence of a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) or stroke has been estimated through several published studies as being between one and three CVAs per million chiropractic adjustments.

One study spanned a period of 28 years, while another reviewed approximately 110 million chiropractic visits. The results of these two studies conclusively show that the risk of stroke from a chiropractic adjustment is small enough to be statistically insignificant.

It has even been estimated to be less than that of "beauty parlor stroke syndrome"-an extremely rare stroke occurrence triggered when a customer leans their head back on a sink to have their hair washed.

Realistically, even the one to three incidents per million adjustments figure could be an overestimation because spinal manipulation was blamed in some cases when the stroke occurred days or even weeks after the chiropractic treatment.

"The fact that a temporal relationship exists between two events does not mean that one caused the other," said researcher Christopher Kent, D.C.

Furthermore, medical researchers frequently misunderstand the critical differences between specific chiropractic adjustments and cervical manipulation. Doctors of chiropractic medicine are highly trained in the use of the adjustment-the specific application of force to help correct nerve interference. Manipulation, however, is the forceful, passive movement of a joint beyond its active limit of motion. Because it does not imply the use of precision, specificity or the correction of nerve interference, manipulation is not synonymous with chiropractic adjustment.

Many of the cases cited by medical researchers as being "chiropractic treatments" actually were spinal manipulations rendered by non-chiropractic practitioners.

Even medical researchers have been forced to admit that chiropractic care carries far less of a stroke risk than some medical treatment. "Indeed, most interventions by allopathic physicians have a higher complication rate than chiropractic interventions," said Dr. Philip Lee, co-investigator of a research survey presented at the American Heart Association's 19th International Joint Conference on Stroke and Cerebral Circulation.
　　
　　(From HealthWorld Online)