Introduction It has been estimated that low back pain (LBP) will affect 84% of the general adult population at some point in their life, with 49% reporting some LBP in the previous 6 months, 23% suffering from chronic LBP, and 11% experiencing physical impairment due to LBP.1,2 Numerous therapies are available for LBP from a variety of clinicians, including primary care providers (PCPs), pain m...

INTRODUCTION Due to different biomechanical, nutritional, and hormonal considerations, it is possible that chiropractors may employ different therapeutic interventions and recommendations for pregnant patients than non-pregnant ones. The objective of this study was to determine the therapeutic interventions that chiropractors who are members of the Ontario Chiropractic Association in the Greate...

The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) of the 1920s is an ancestor of today's ACA. Established in 1922 as an alternative to B.J. Palmer's protective society, the Universal Chiropractors' Association (UCA), the ACA floundered under its first administration, but found its way when Frank R. Margetts, D.D., LL.D., D.C. was elected its second president in 1923. A skilled orator, Margetts toured...

In December 2008, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the National Health Statistics Report on the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by adults and children in the United States for 2007. The authors—Patricia Barnes and colleagues—found that when it comes to children, the most common CAM therapies are natural products and chiropractic spinal manipulations. Th...

BACKGROUND More than 100 years after its inception the chiropractic profession has failed to define itself in a way that is understandable, credible and scientifically coherent. This failure has prevented the profession from establishing its cultural authority over any specific domain of health care. OBJECTIVE To present a model for the chiropractic profession to establish cultural authority ...

The shared decision making process has become increasingly important in the management of spinal disorders where there remains a variety of treatment options. Spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is often recommended as a conservative option by evidence based clinical practice guidelines and a treatment modality frequently utilized by chiropractors and other clinicians who offer SMT to their patie...

BACKGROUND Physical manipulation and manual therapies are thousands of years old. The most popular western world iteration of these therapies is delivered by chiropractors. It can be argued that the collective public health benefit from chiropractic for spinal pain has been very substantial, however as chiropractic has transitioned from craft to profession it has encountered many internally and...

Upton and McComas claimed that most patients with carpal tunnel syndrome not only have compressive lesions at the wrist, but also show evidence of damage to cervical nerve roots. This "double crush" hypothesis has gained some popularity among chiropractors because it seems to provide a rationale for adjusting the cervical spine in treating carpal tunnel syndrome. Here I examine use of the conce...