Is the Ban of Cervical Spine Manipulation for Acute Neck Pain Patients Really a Solution?
An editorial in the May 13, 2003, issue of the journal Neurology included a statement that should be of concern to all doctors of chiropractic.1 Based on another article in the same issue of Neurology by Smith, et al.,2 the editorial stated: “… in the absence of randomized controlled trial evidence demonstrating the efficacy of cervical manipulation, the best current evidence suggests that the small risk of dissection and stroke outweighs the benefit of this treatment modality for patients with acute neck pain.” In other words, until cervical manipulation has been shown to be effective for the treatment of acute neck pain via randomized, controlled trials, it should be abandoned as a method of caring for these patients because of the small associated risk of stroke. This imprudent statement is, unfortunately, representative of what many neurologists consider factual. This article will attempt to disclose some of the inadequacies of the Smith, et al., study, and the unreasonableness o
