Chronic Pain & Chiropractic Care

What can chiropractic do for chronic neck and low back pain? This is especially important due to the drug crisis today. There are many studies regarding this issue and I will list a couple below.

*Giles LG, Muller R. JMPT 1999*

• Study compared spinal manipulation, needle acupuncture, and NSAIDs for the treatment of chronic back pain.
• After 30 days, spinal manipulation was the only intervention to achieve statistically significant improvement.
• Intervention by way of acupuncture or NSAIDs did not result in significant improvements in any of the outcome measures.

CHIROPRACTIC MORE EFFECTIVE THAN MEDICAL CARE FOR LBP; JMPT – March 2004;27:160-9.

• Investigators pooled data on 60 chiropractic patients from 51 chiropractic clinics and 11 patients cared for by general practitioners from 14 medical clinics. All subjects had acute or chronic LBP.
• Findings showed that chiropractic care had significant advantages over medical care. Specifically, “a clinically important advantage for chiropractic patients was seen in chronic patients in the short-term (>10 [visual analog scale] points), and both acute and chronic chiropractic patients experienced somewhat greater relief up to 1 year. ”Patients with leg pain below the knee appeared to have the greatest advantage from chiropractic care.