In March of this year, I was certified as a Trauma Qualified Chiropractor by the Academy of Chiropractic. As of this time there were only 135 doctors awarded this certificate in the entire country.
The training is credentialed by the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo and Cleveland University.
A 2015 MRI study found signs of alar ligament injury in 55% of older patients whose chronic neck pain had no other identifiable cause. For Boston and Massachusetts personal injury attorneys, that finding speaks to a familiar problem: the client who still hurts months after a car crash, but whose standard imaging reads as “normal” or “age-related degeneration.”
The number that should stop every elective-surgery patient in their tracks is 94%.
In a large 2017 Journal of Pain Research study of 1,842 people who had undergone lumbar spine surgery, 94% reported some degree of residual low-back pain. That does not mean 94% had severe pain, nor does it mean 94% of the operations were surgical failures. But for an invasive procedure that many patients understandably hope will eliminate their back pain, the persistence of any low-back pain in such a large proportion of respondents is difficult to dismiss.
The same study found that 20.6% met the researchers’ criteria for failed back surgery syndrome —roughly one out of every five patients. Residual numbness was reported by 69.8%, cold sensations by 43.3%, and paresthesia such as tingling or abnormal sensations by 35.3%.
The medical literature recognizes restraint-related injuries to the spine and abdominal structures. Rutherford documented the increase in neck sprains and sternum fractures following compulsory seat-belt use and separately identified an apparent, unexpected increase in abdominal-organ injuries. Later medical literature continued to emphasize the significance of the seat-belt sign and its association with internal injury.
