Guide To Chiropractic Care (About Chiropractors And Chiropractic)

Part 3 of 3 - An Overview Of Chiropractic Care

Have Side Effects Or Problems Been Reported From Using Chiropractic To Treat Back Pain?

Patients may or may not experience side effects from chiropractic treatment. Effects may include temporary discomfort in parts of the body that were treated, headache, or tiredness. These effects tend to be minor and to resolve within 1 to 2 days.

The rate of serious complications from chiropractic has been debated. There have been no organized prospective studies on the number of serious complications. From what is now known, the risk appears to be very low. It appears to be higher for cervical-spine, or neck, manipulation (e.g., cases of stroke have been reported. The rare complication of concern from low-back adjustment is cauda equina syndrome that occurs when the nerves of the cauda equina (a bundle of spinal nerves extending beyond the end of the spinal cord) are compressed and damaged. Symptoms include:

• leg weakness
• loss of bowel, bladder, and/or sexual functions
• changes in sensation around the rectum or genitalia

Cauda equina syndrome is estimated to occur once per millions of treatments (the number of millions varies; one study placed it at 100 million).

For your safety, it is important to inform all of your health care providers about any care or treatments that you are using or considering, including chiropractic. This is to help ensure a coordinated course of care (to find out more, see the NCCAM fact sheet "Selecting a Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioner").

What Has Scientific Research Found Out About Whether Chiropractic Works For Low-Back Pain?

So far, the scientific research on chiropractic and low-back pain has focused on if, and how well, chiropractic care helps in relieving pain and other symptoms that people have with low-back pain. This research often compares chiropractic to other treatments.

Overall, research evidence has been seen as weak and less than convincing for the effectiveness of chiropractic for back pain.

Even though research studies of chiropractic treatment for low-back pain have been of uneven quality and insufficient to allow firm conclusions. Nonetheless, the overall sense of the data is that for low-back pain, chiropractic treatment and conventional medical treatments are about equally helpful. It is harder to draw conclusions about the relative value of chiropractic for other clinical conditions.

There are also scientific controversies about chiropractic, both inside and outside the profession. For example, within the profession, there have been disagreements about:

Outside views of chiropractic treatment have questioned:

Chiropractic Research: The Bottom Line

Research studies on chiropractic are ongoing. The results are expected to expand scientific understanding of chiropractic. A key area of research is the basic science of what happens in the body (including its cells and nerves) when specific chiropractic treatments are given.

Related Resources

_{Source: NCCAM Publication No. D196}

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