Chiropractic adjustments for infantile colic – useless and dangerous

This month, in an early online edition of the journal Pediatrics, physicians from Cincinnati, Ohio reported a disturbing case of a 21 day old infant who was brought to her pediatrician’s office after her mother felt a cracking sensation in her infant’s back. X-rays showed fractures of the 7^th and 8^th ribs on the left posterior (back) side. Five days before going to her pediatrician’s office, she had seen a chiropractor for fussiness and crying consistent with colic. The mother reported that during the chiropractic visit the infant was held upside down. Later, pressure was exerted along the spine with a spring activated device (activator adjusting instrument) at the exact site where the fractures were located.

Some chiropractic practitioners claim to help a wide variety of problems in infants and children including allergies, asthma, attention deficit disorder, bed wetting, cancer, colic, ear, nose and throat problems, eczema, feeding (and breastfeeding) difficulty, headaches,  immune disorders, sleeping difficulties, and urinary problems .^1-3 Others recommend checking a child’s spine for “subluxations” even if no symptoms are present.^1-3 Yet, when trials of chiropractic care for specific disorders including allergy⁴, asthma⁵, bedwetting⁶,  and colic⁷, are reviewed, little evidence exists that this therapy works for these disorders. Many others disorders have not been studied in randomized trials comparing objective measurable outcomes. Instead, chiropractic journals often report on a single patient or series of patients who subjectively seem better without any comparison to standard therapies.

Practitioners of this form of complementary and alternative medicine insist that their techniques of manipulating the spine are safe with few serious side effects mostly based on self-reporting of complications.  However, serious complications other than rib fractures can occur. Many who receive chiropractic care do not realize that arteries supplying the posterior circulation of the brain (vertebral arteries) course through the vertebra in the neck. Excess movement at this level can tear or damage these arteries with a resulting stroke. The Canadian Stroke Consortium reported that one fourth of all tears (traumatic dissections) of the vertebral arteries causing stroke were due to neck manipulation.⁸

Parents should be aware that chiropractic treatments can cause serious side effects. They also need to understand that there is little objective evidence to support chiropractic care for many pediatric disorders. Having seen three healthy young adults with chiropractic manipulation induced vertebral artery tears with resulting strokes in my career, I am uncertain if I would ever recommend this form of treatment for any disease in an adult or child.