Chiropractic Extremely Safe According to Study

A retrospective analysis study published on January 23, 2023, by Scientific Reports showed that chiropractic care is extremely safe with very few adverse events. The study was conducted from January 1, 2017, through August 31, 2022, and involved 30 chiropractic clinics in Hong Kong. Scientific Reports is an open access peer reviewed journal that publishes original research on subjects related to natural sciences, psychology, medicine and engineering.

The study begins by defining what an adverse event is by saying, "An adverse event (AE) is any unfavorable and unintended sign, symptom, or disease temporally associated with the use of medical treatment or procedure that may or may not be considered related to the medical treatment or procedure."

This study graded all adverse events into one of five categories based on severity of the event, (1-mild, 2-moderate, 3-severe, 4-life-threatening, 5-death). During the study period, there were 960,140 patient visits involving a chiropractic adjustment that the study referred to as Spinal Manipulative Treatment (SMT) given to a total of 54,846 unique patients.

Information related to any adverse events in patients was obtained by reports from the clinical professional staff (38%), followed by a phone call (28%), the front desk staff at the clinic (10%), text patient survey (8%), other support staff (5%), internet (5%), and emails (5%).

The authors reported that in this entire study, with all these patients, there were no adverse events that were rated either in category 4-life threatening, or in category 5-death. There were only two cases that were listed as category 3-severe. Both of those cases involved women who were over 60 years of age and suffered with osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is when the bones lose calcium and become more brittle. In these two cases, the women involved suffered rib fractures. The study also noted that there were no cases of stroke, transient ischemic attack, vertebral or carotid artery dissection, cauda equina syndrome, or spinal fracture.

From the 960,140 total chiropractic visits, only 37 adverse events were listed that fit into either category one or category two, that were potentially associated with chiropractic care. Of these, 28 were listed as a temporary increase in the patient’s original symptoms. The remaining 9 were associated with symptoms such as jaw pain, chest pain, headaches, or some kind of new radiating pain. Each of these cases either had a prior history of these conditions or were receiving other types of professional care that could also have been responsible for the adverse events.

The study authors noted in their conclusions that adverse events associated with chiropractic are exceedingly rare. They reported, "This current study, which retrospectively studied a large dataset from integrated chiropractic clinics in Hong Kong, found that severe AEs potentially occurring in relation to SMT were rare, yielding an incidence of 0.21 per 100,000 SMT sessions. No AEs were identified that were life-threatening or resulted in death."