Chiropractic treatments for newborns raising alarms
Pediatricians warn parents of ‘scare tactics’
Pediatricians are warning parents about “outlandish” claims made by some chiropractors who promote spinal manipulations for babies and children.
Chiropractors say their adjustments on newborns are gentle, with no popping, cracking or crunching. Instead, pressure is applied to a specific vertebra with about the same amount of force used to check a tomato’s ripeness, as they like to say.
But some doctors are worried that chiropractors are using “scare tactics” to claim that up to 80 per cent of newborns need a spinal adjustment to treat the “trauma” of entering the world. Newborns experience “nerve interference” or a misaligned cervical spine from the birthing process, even when delivered via caesarean section, and should get treatment as soon as possible, chiropractors say. Some claim chiropractic manipulations can “peel away” the symptoms of autism and help non-verbal toddlers speak.
“It’s often an ‘us’ against ‘them’ perspective and I don’t think it needs to be,” said Dr. Douglas Mack, an assistant clinical professor at McMaster University. “But when they overstate what is outside of their realm, quite honestly that borders on the fraudulent.”
Studies suggest spinal manipulations in adults can help with acute low back pain and neck pain. However, chiropractors also claim adjustments can treat a wide array of childhood problems, including colic, constipation, ear infections, digestive disorders, hyperactivity and bed wetting. Other controversial claims include: children who receive chiropractic care are “superior” in health to those who don’t; spinal adjustments can help learning disorders and dyslexia; and chiro adjustments alleviate food and other allergies.
Mack, a pediatric allergy specialist, said he has treated children who have been told by a chiropractor that their spine or vertebrae is misaligned and they could “outgrow their nut allergies” with treatment.
“They go and try the nuts, and they end up having a severe reaction,” he said.
Some chiropractors have posted pictures of themselves on Twitter adjusting newborns and babies in hospitals, including one Ottawaarea chiropractor who visited the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario to adjust the spine of a two-month-old with a viral infection. After a complaint, the hospital responded in a tweet: “This isn’t allowed. We don’t permit chiropractic practice at CHEO nor do we have chiropractors on staff or invite them into hospital.”
Dr. Clay Travis Jones, a pediatrician at Newton-Wellesley Hospital outside Boston, said there is no evidence “whatsoever” that 80 per cent of newborns suffer birth trauma.
“There’s lots of anecdotal reports and scary memes where they show the obstetrician or midwife pulling the baby out by the neck,” Jones said. “But there’s no legitimate evidence that any appreciable per cent of babies suffer subluxations to the spinal bones or any injury that would be amenable to adjustments ... They’re just scare tactics."
The American Academy of Paediatrics has warned that children may be at risk of very rare, yet serious, complications from spinal manipulation. A 2007 study led by University of Alberta researchers who reviewed 13 published studies found 14 injuries to children who received chiropractic treatments. Nine of them were serious, and two were fatal. One child died from a brain hemorrhage, the other after a suspected neck fracture. Ten of the injuries were attributed to chiropractic care.
More worrying to the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) is the risk of a chiropractor attempting to treat a serious problem requiring medical treatment by a real medical doctor. In the 2007 study, two children died because of delayed treatment for meningitis.
The CPS recommends that “parents should be made aware that there is a lack of substantiated evidence for the theory of subluxated vertebrae as the causality for illness in children.”
Others have gone further. Writing in 2016 in the journal Bioethics, retired chiropractor Samuel Homola warned “any attempt to manipulate the immature, cartilaginous spine of a neonate or a small child to correct a putative chiropractic subluxation should be regarded as dangerous and unnecessary.”
There are 8,500 licensed chiropractors in Canada, and they are regulated in all provinces.
In an email to the Post, the College of Chiropractors of Ontario said its members aren’t restricted to treating patients of a particular age, that “many can and do treat children” and that advertising has to meet certain criteria, including that it not be false or misleading.
“We encourage anyone aware of potential acts of professional misconduct by CCO members to bring that information to the attention of CCO,” college registrar JoAnn Wilson said.
Blogger and consumer health advocate Ryan Armstrong, who holds a PhD in biomedical engineering, has been investigating chiropractic claims. “The single most worrying thing I find is just this complete disregard for evidence and scientific truth,” he said, adding regulatory colleges aren’t doing enough to sanction members who break their standards of practice.
“There are a lot of good practitioners out there, a lot of responsible ones who are very different from their radical counterparts,” Armstrong said.