Cervical manipulation does not cause stroke in elderly.
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE
- This is the first study exclusively evaluating the stroke association with CMT in the elderly patient.
- An evaluation was performed on 1,157,475 Medicare part B enrollees in 2007
- There was no increased association of stroke when chiropractic physicians treated an elderly person with neck pain than when a primary care physician treated an elderly with neck pain.
- Conclusion: Chiropractic treatment of neck pain does not result in stroke for elderly.
Abstract
Objective
The purpose of this study was to quantify risk of stroke after chiropractic spinal manipulation, as compared to evaluation by a primary care physician, for Medicare beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with neck pain.
Methods
This is a retrospective cohort analysis of a 100% sample of annualized Medicare claims data on 1,157,475 beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with an office visit to either a chiropractor or primary care physician for neck pain. We compared hazard of vertebrobasilar stroke and any stroke at 7 and 30 days after office visit using a Cox proportional hazards model. We used direct adjusted survival curves to estimate cumulative probability of stroke up to 30 days for the 2 cohorts.
Results
The proportion of subjects with stroke of any type in the chiropractic cohort was 1.2 per 1000 at 7 days and 5.1 per 1000 at 30 days. In the primary care cohort, the proportion of subjects with stroke of any type was 1.4 per 1000 at 7 days and 2.8 per 1000 at 30 days. In the chiropractic cohort, the adjusted risk of stroke was significantly lower at 7 days as compared to the primary care cohort (hazard ratio, 0.39; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-0.45), but at 30 days, a slight elevation in risk was observed for the chiropractic cohort (hazard ratio, 1.10; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.19).
Conclusions
Among Medicare B beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with neck pain, incidence of vertebrobasilar stroke was extremely low. Small differences in risk between patients who saw a chiropractor and those who saw a primary care physician are probably not clinically significant.
CITATION
(link to open access version)