Is It Safe for Infants and Children to Be Adjusted by A Chiropractor?

Over the years the safety of pediatric chiropractic care has been called into question by some medical doctors. This concern is primarily based from just one study published in 2007 by Vohra et. al.1 In this study the authors reviewed cases over 104 years and found ten cases of “direct adverse events” involving pediatric chiropractic. When you look under the hood and inspect the ten reported “direct adverse events”, two of them involved children that had severe head trauma before and after their visit to a chiropractor, one involved a child with an extremely rare bone disease that had a major fall before seeing a chiropractor, and one involved a child with a diagnosed intraspinal mass prior to seeing a chiropractor. Two of the cases that were included in the study weren’t actually cases, but “letters to the editor” that violated the authors own inclusion criteria for the study, but Vohra et. al still included them. One case was taken from a text book that was not actually a case either… 

If you made it to this paragraph and read through that “nerdy word salad”, here is the simplified summary: In 104 years there have been just 10 reported cases of direct adverse events involving pediatric chiropractic care. Of those 10 cases 7 have been distorted to support the author’s viewpoint and create fear and doubt about the safety of pediatric chiropractic care. If this is comparted to the 1,215 medical malpractice claims in pediatric medicine in just 9 years2, well it’s very easy to see just how safe pediatric chiropractic care really is.

There are some medical doctors that have become social media influencers and found videos of people that are apparently chiropractors preforming strange maneuvers on infants and calling it a chiropractic adjustment. These social media MD’s use these gross videos to advise the public against pediatric chiropractic. Albeit, there are dummies in every profession, but pediatric chiropractic care is extremely safe when performed by well-trained pediatric chiropractors and doesn’t look anything like those videos portray. The force used to adjust an infant is about the same amount used to check a tomato for ripeness and there is no popping, cracking, or sudden movements involved.  Infants often sleep through adjustments. The challenge for parents can be finding these well-trained pediatric chiropractors (please refer to the Principled Chiropractic Association directory and filter for pediatrics). 

References

  1. Vohra S, Johnston BC, Cramer K, Humphreys K. Adverse events associated with pediatric spinal manipulation: a systematic review. Pediatrics. 2007 Jan;119(1):e275-83. 
  2. Ranum D. Study of malpractice claims involving children. The doctors company. https://www.thedoctors.com/articles/study-of-malpractice-claims-involving-children/# ; 2018.
  3. Thakrar A, Forrest A, Maltenfort M, Forrest C. Child mortality in the US and 19 OECD comparator nations: a 50-year time-trend analysis. Health aff. 2018 Jan; 37(1):140-149.