A Proposed Model With Possible Implications for Safety and Technique Adaptations for Chiropractic Spinal Manipulative Therapy for Infants and Children

Adverse Events Due to Chiropractic and Other Manual Therapies for Infants and Children: A Review of the Literature

“…It is also necessary to determine whether particular techniques or forces are more appropriate for different ages, perhaps in accordance with the known osteoligamentous tensile strength limits, the anatomical development of the spine and nervous system in the child, and the potential for subcatastrophic events, especially in infants less than 3 months of age. 49 In addition to the 15 serious events that have been reported, there have been 775 mild to moderate adverse events. This includes 604 cases of crying, soreness, or transient headache, 16 30 and 87 cases of short lasting (seconds) marked bradycardia, in infants after SMT to the upper cervical spine in otherwise healthy children from medical manipulators.…”

Forces of Commonly Used Chiropractic Techniques for Children: A Review of the Literature

“…This search identified 2 articles by Marchand,15,16 which when references were hand searched yielded 3 more articles, by Koch et al 17,18 and Snodgrass et al 19 Searching of the literature using technique-specific search terms resulted in the inclusion of a further 4 studies 16,20-22 and 1 textbook source, 23 with an additional in-press journal article yielding direct contact with the author 24 (Table 1).…”

“…The thrust is designed to restore motion in the targeted joint by applying force to the area of segmental restricted motion. 15,26 Chiropractors in Europe were surveyed about their practice techniques for children, 25 resulting in the following guidelines for pediatric chiropractic, identifying 4 grades of therapeutic input for the application of pediatric SMT for different age groups 15 :…”

Response to “Forces of Commonly Used Chiropractic Techniques for Children: A Review of the Literature”

“…This is an important subject, and given the relatively scarce data available, it is a difficult task. With limited published reports in this field, only a small number of references with experimental data were available to these authors, who therefore had to rely heavily on a few sources [2][3][4] to formulate their conclusions. This small amount of data leads to potential sampling and inferential bias, which can affect the conclusions drawn.…”