Celebrating Chiropractic Medicine’s Legacy of Safe and Effective Care

As chiropractic medicines legacy moves into its 118th year, it is worth reflecting on its long history of providing safe and effective health care.  Despite years of adversity, chiropractic is now well established in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and other parts of the world, with an estimated 30 million people receiving treatment each year. In fact, chiropractic physicians today make up the third largest group of “doctored” medical professionals in the world. Even more significantly, chiropractic care is increasingly recognized as a valuable component of integrated healthcare models and is widely used to address a broad range of musculoskeletal and neurological disorders.

Along the way, chiropractic has been studied scientifically many times and in many different research and clinical settings, producing results that attest to its effectiveness. Chiropractic is known not only for providing drug-free, non-invasive health care solutions, but solutions that work. A 2004 study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics found that chiropractic was more effective at managing chronic low back pain than traditional medical care. A 2003 study in the journal Spine found similarly that spinal manipulation provided better short-term relief of chronic spinal pain that a variety of medications and other remedies.

Safety of Chiropractic Care

At the same time, chiropractic’s history of safety has been unparalleled within the healthcare community. Most chiropractic manipulation is performed on the spine to treat back pain and related symptoms, and statistics rate the chance of adverse effects at lower than 1 per 10,000 treatments. The chances of adverse effects arising from neck manipulation are even lower–1 per several million treatments. To put this level of risk into perspective, if you have to get in your automobile and drive a mile to get to your chiropractor’s office, you are at greater risk of serious injury from a car accident during that drive than you are of being hurt as a result of your chiropractic visit.

Another measure of the astounding safety record of chiropractic, interestingly enough, is the premiums that doctors of chiropractic have to pay for malpractice insurance relative to those that medical doctors pay. No one looks at safety records more closely than the people who provide healthcare professionals with their insurance. The average premium that a doctor of chiropractic pays for malpractice insurance in the U.S. is $4,000 per year. Medical doctors pay approximately $90,000 per year.

No Drugs or Surgery

One of the reasons for this disparity is that chiropractic provides effective health care without the need for drugs or invasive surgeries. Every year in the U.S., approximately 2 million people experience side effects from drugs prescribed by their doctors for back pain. And many of these adverse reactions are from supposedly “safe” drugs such as Ibuprofen. Surgical procedures, of course, carry their own risks.

As doctors of chiropractic, we’re proud of our profession’s long tradition of providing safe, effective healthcare to our patients. At the same time, we’re grateful for your trust and we look forward to serving you for another 118 years and beyond!