Chiropractic
To be able to judge whether any health treatment is safe and effective, we need evidence.
Evidence on a treatment is gathered by conducting fair scientific tests.
Chiropractic is a health profession, rather than a single treatment. Evidence about chiropractic generally refers to one or more of the treatments that chiropractors can offer.
Studies that examine health treatments, including treatments offered by chiropractors, can reach different conclusions on whether the treatments are safe and effective. This can happen for various reasons, including differences in the design of the study, bias or simply chance. When this happens, more high-quality research is needed to determine whether the treatment is effective and safe.
There is good evidence available that chiropractic is an effective treatment for persistent lower Lumbago (low back pain) .
This means that scientific trials conducted to investigate the effect of chiropractic on lower back pain found that it did have a beneficial effect.
A 2011 Cochrane review of studies of chiropractic intervention treatments offered by chiropractors, including spinal manipulation found that it is not possible to confirm or refute that chiropractic treatments are any more effective than conventional treatments for persistent lower back pain.
Conventional treatments include painkillers, exercise and physiotherapy . Physiotherapists may sometimes offer a similar treatment approach to chiropractors.
There is some, mostly poor-quality, evidence that manipulation of bones, joints and soft tissue, as practised by chiropractors, may be an effective treatment for some other musculoskeletal problems. These include:
This evidence is not conclusive, and therefore isn't strong enough to form the basis of a recommendation to use the treatment for these conditions.
More high-quality research is needed to determine whether manual treatments are effective for these health conditions.
Despite being used by some practitioners, there is a lack of good-quality evidence on the effectiveness of chiropractic treatments for other conditions, including:
This means that fair tests into the effectiveness of chiropractic treatments for these conditions have not been conducted.
Chiropractic is not recommended as a treatment option for these conditions, due to the lack of evidence. You should follow the treatment options recommended by your doctor or other healthcare professional.
Chiropractic is a health profession concerned with the bones, joints, muscles and soft tissue. Chiropractic treatment often involves spinal manipulation. Access to chiropractic through the NHS is limited.
Chiropractic treatment often involves manipulation of the joints, muscles and bones, especially manipulation of the spine. It may also involve advice on diet, exercise and lifestyle.
Chiropractic is commonly used for musculoskeletal conditions (affecting the muscles, bones and joints), such as lower back pain, neck pain and shoulder pain.
There is legal regulation of chiropractic in the UK. Chiropractic is one of two complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) that operate under statutory regulation.
There is good evidence that chiropractic is an effective treatment for persistent lower back pain.