This is a little post in follow-up to the previous one (as follow-ups tend to do).
It is in response to some ridiculous statements I have been reading on some of the blogs of so-called sceptics. I know, I probably shouldn’t really spend my time on these things and it makes very little difference as people will always believe what they want to believe, but I did identify one very interesting problem with their logic. Research has been done for many years into the treatment of back pain. They assessed the effectiveness of manipulation, exercise, medication and doing nothing at all. Compared it to one another and decided what was best. Manipulation came out looking good-ish but not great-ish. Because chiropractors manipulate spines these so-called sceptics came to conclude that chiropractors are only good-ish at treating back pain and no better than physiotherapists or medication and only marginally better than not doing anything at all. What they do seem to miss the point of is that chiropractors don’t just manipulate. They often do but that’s because they selected those patients presenting with back pain which is likely to respond to manipulative therapy and told those who wouldn’t to see someone else. Basically of those 100 patients presenting with back pain they selected those who would be happy with their results by just manipulating them. Then they took those who needed more than just manipulating and told them they needed orthotics, a heel raise, a dental splint or any combination of things. This may or may not have been combined with manipulation. Then they took those they couldn’t help and told them they should see a surgeon or a pain specialist. The second problem with their logic is that there is no research into this approach. None. Not a cumberland sausage. So according to the sceptics I have no evidence to claim to treat asthma and colic (which I don’t), and very weak evidence to treat back pain. Personally I feel that I have no good evidence for treating back pain at all, but I can tell you one thing: when I do what I do the very vast majority of people suffering with back pain problems stop suffering with back pain.
What I also do know is that this approach seems to work and those chiropractors who work like this end up with very good reputations, very happy patients and very little time to get onto blogs. Personally I feel that it is worth having this discussion, because any patient thinking that I know everything and know everything for sure should know that this is not the case. As a clinician I do my best to understand what is going on with you and find out what the best way is to get you out of this mess and feel better. The guarantee I got is one way of telling you that I more or less get it right most of the time but more importantly that you won’t be wasting your money.
I hope you found it interesting and let me know your thoughts.
Kind regards,
Stefaan Vossen
