Some principal findings for Chiropractic

Some principal findings for Chiropractic

The New Zealand Commission has just put out a report on the principal findings of chiropractic.

• Chiropractic is a branch of the healing arts specialising in the correction by spinal manual therapy of what chiropractors identify as biomechanical disorders of the spinal column. They carry out spinal diagnosis and therapy at a sophisticated and refined level.

• Chiropractors are the only health practitioners who are necessarily equipped by their education and training to carry out spinal manual therapy.

• General medical practitioners and physiotherapists have no adequate training in spinal manual therapy, though a few have acquired skill in it subsequent to graduation.

• Spinal manual therapy in the hands of a registered chiropractor is safe.

• The education and training of a registered chiropractor are sufficient to enable him to determine whether there are contraindications to spinal manual therapy in a particular case, and whether the patient should have medical care instead of or as well as chiropractic care.

• Spinal manual therapy can be effective in relieving musculoskeletal symptoms such a s back pain, and other symptoms known to respond to such therapy, such as migraine.

• In a limited number of cases where there are organic and/or visceral symptoms, chiropractic treatment may provide relief, but his is unpredictable, and in such cases the patient should be under concurrent medical care if that is practicable.

• Although the precise nature of the biomechanical dysfunction which chiropractors claim to treat has not yet been demonstrated scientifically, and although the precise reasons why spinal manual therapy provides relief have not yet been scientifically explained, chiropractors have reasonable grounds based on clinical evidence for their belief that symptoms of the kind described above can respond beneficially to spinal manual therapy.

• In the public interest and in the interests of patients there must be no impediment to full professional co-operation between chiropractors and medical practitioners.

• Chiropractors should, in the public interest, be accepted as partners in the general health care system. No other health professional is as well qualified by his general training to carry out a diagnosis for spinal mechanical dysfunction or to perform spinal manual therapy.

For more information on health and safety visit the Ontario Chiropractic Association; website at www.chiropractic.on.ca or call 1877-327-2273.; Dr. George Traitses, 416-499-5656, www.infinite-health.com