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Philadelphia Magazine Lauds Chiropractic
Dynamic Chiropractic September 1, 1993, Volume 11, Issue
18
Chiropractic is yet again garnering accolades from the
press. Philadelphia Magazine, a monthly publication with
a circulation of approximately 128,000, featured an in-depth,
well-researched article, "The New Medicine," in
its May 1993 issue. The article details the benefits of
chiropractic care, as well as other "alternative therapies"
such as acupuncture, homeopathy, massage therapy, and hypnosis.
Each therapy has its own sidebar featuring the comments
of a practitioner within that discipline.
Author Carol Saline begins the article on a persuasive note
by quoting the New England Journal of Medicine study which
reported that in 1990, Americans made an estimated 425 million
visits to providers of "nonconventional therapy,"
spending $10.3 billion of their own money. But the unconventionality
of these treatments, particularly chiropractic, may soon
be a thing of the past. Ms. Saline reports on the $2 million
funding for research authorized at the Office of Alternative
Medicine (OAM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). She quotes the OAM's director Dr. Joseph Jacobs:
"We'd like to find what conditions could best be helped
by alternative medicine. For example, we could use better
studies to show how chiropractic makes back pain more manageable."
Chiropractic care is given fair treatment in the article,
and the author comments on the fact that chiropractic has
broken away from other alternative therapies in terms of
credibility: "If you're one of those skeptics who still
think alternative medicine will never be anything but just
that, consider the case of chiropractic." She then
focuses attention on the public's ever-increasing acceptance
of chiropractic over the past 20 years: "... it has
moved from being viewed by most people as weird and even
dangerous to a position of relative acceptance by both the
medical and lay communities. Chiropractic is now the third-largest
primary health care profession in the Western world, led
only by medicine and dentistry." The author also notes
the 14 accredited chiropractic colleges in the U.S., and
the high standards of those programs.
Citing studies which reflect the effectiveness of chiropractic,
the article outlines the RAND study's conclusion that manipulation
is appropriate for low-back pain. The article also describes
the Australian study which found that 30 patients randomly
chosen for chiropractic care from a group of 85 people with
a long-term history of migraines improved radically within
seven visits.
The article assures readers that chiropractic care is quite
safe. Addressing the supposed risk of chiropractic treatment,
the author compares chiropractors' yearly malpractice insurance
fees (roughly $3,000) to those of orthopedic surgeons (about
$50,000), explaining that because chiropractors are rarely
sued, their insurance fees remain low. Again trying to dispel
the myth that chiropractors hurt patients she writes, "There
is a remote risk of stroke occurring from neck manipulation,
but it happens in two to three cases per million treatments,
compared with 150,000 cases of paralysis per million neurosurgical
neck operations."
For the sidebar on chiropractic, the author chose Philadelphia
chiropractor Basil B. Snyman.
Ms. Saline's association with Dr.
Snyman began three years ago when she was
writing a piece about chiropractic. To learn more about
chiropractic, she become a patient of Dr.
Snyman's and subsequently wrote articles
about the profession. She was satisfied with the treatment
and has remained a patient. The prominence and longevity
of Dr. Snyman's
practice -- he has been at his Center City office in the
heart of Philadelphia for 18 years -- certainly gives him
credibility. The sidebar provides a fairly thorough description
of what chiropractors do, describing Dr.
Snyman's (and chiropractic's) holistic treatment
regimen: "What he does, after x-rays, a history and
an examination, is embark on a program of spinal manipulation
(sometimes with electrotherapy and ultrasound) along with
diet, exercise and nutrition suggestions." It also
features a photo of Dr. Snyman
treating a beaming patient -- terrific PR for chiropractic.
The article explains that most of Dr.
Snyman's patients are suffering from back
problems, "and by the time they reach him, fed up and
desperate, they've been through the medical mill."
Patients are often surprised when they get relief for a
problem that is completely different from the complaint
that brought them to the chiropractor in the first place.
Emphasized in the article is chiropractic as an alternative
to surgery, chiropractic's maintenance and postoperative
benefits, and the relief chiropractic can offer for neck
pain and headaches. When suggesting a method for choosing
a DC, the author advises readers to "rely on the recommendation
of a satisfied friend" and provides the telephone number
of the Pennsylvania Chiropractic Society (PCS).
"We've come a long way," said Dr.
Snyman when discussing the article. "At
least we've come to the point where we don't get bashed
like we used to."
But typically, there are a few questionable comments mixed
with the positive ones in the article. As Dr.
Synman remarked, "All the articles
about chiropractic have some left-handed comments."
For example, the author makes this statement about subluxations:
"Someone likened them to a unicorn: sounds great but
nobody's ever found one." And after explaining how
DCs believe that relieving pressure on the nerves along
the spinal cord will restore health, the author writes skeptically,
"Maybe so, maybe not. But if you limp into a chiropractor's
office with shooting pains in your leg and walk out straight
and pain-free, do you care that he believes that he can
use the same technique to cure a cold?"
Overall, the article reinforces the fact that the profession
has steadily built up the public's trust. Although chiropractic
is still grouped with "alternative therapies,"
the profession is steadily breaking out of this constraint
and moving toward primary status.
The profession continues to grow: more patients and more
DCs. In Pennsylvania, the article reports, "the increase
in chiropractors is rampant" with 3,500 DCs licensed
in the last 15 years. As chiropractic numbers grow and as
the profession carves out a larger slice of the health care
market, the task as always remains to offer quality care.
Positive article of this nature don't hurt either.
DC
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