Concerns about referring patients to chiropractors

As an attorney and advocate for patient safety, I believe the authors of the Motherisk article that appeared in the August 2013 issue of Canadian Family Physician give an insufficient account of the risks that might be associated with chiropractic treatment of pregnant patients.¹

Many chiropractors continue to base their treatments on the “detection” and “correction” of “subluxations,” ill-defined and unproven spinal lesions unknown to the medical profession. Nevertheless, chiropractors “adjust” these subluxations with any number of treatments, including manual therapy. Thus, the physician whose patient is receiving manual therapy from a chiropractor might be wholly unaware that the chiropractor is actually adjusting these nonexistent subluxations. These adjustments cannot effectively treat back pain or any other condition or disease.

In fact, no better example of this can be found than the International Chiropractors Association Council on Chiropractic Pediatrics, which will be holding, in conjunction with Canadian chiropractors, its annual convention in Montreal, Que, this coming October (www.icapediatrics.com/news-conference.php). There will be presentations on adjustments for breastfeeding infants and for pelvic instability in pregnant patients. (Chiropractors purport to detect and correct subluxations in children, too, including neonates.) Although apparently not a subject for this conference, the Council also promotes use of the Webster technique, an adjustment of the sacral subluxation purported to have many positive effects including facilitation of “optimal fetal positioning.”²

Physicians should also be aware that many chiropractors are against vaccination. Antivaccination advocates have been invited to be presenters at previous chiropractic pediatrics conferences sponsored by this same organization.

I suggest that the prudent family physician contemplating referring any patient to a chiropractor be fully informed about chiropractic practice before doing so and that reliance on chiropractors for that information might not present a complete picture.

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