When Orthopedic Surgeons Bring In a Chiropractor

What do you do if you’re an orthopedic surgeon – with years of training and valuable experience and someone comes in with sudden, painful low back pain caused by bending over and twisting?

You’d do all your regular testing procedures, examine the patient, find out the history of back pain, obtain a medical history and get imaging studies. That’s right, but what do you do next when all the MRI scans, CT scans, and x-rays are normal and show nothing abnormal? The patient still has back pain. That’s when the orthopedic surgeons called in a chiropractor.

The 44 patients in this predicament were diagnosed with sciatica back pain and the patients were referred to a chiropractor in a hospital in Norway. The chiropractor examined them thoroughly and discovered that every one of them was suffering from a misalignment of the spine where it meets the pelvis (a lumbopelvic fixation). This was the reason for their back pain.

Thirty-three of the patients with the low back pain visited the chiropractor in his office while the other 11 were treated in the hospital. The researchers of this study followed up a few years later with the patients treated by the chiropractor.

They discovered that only two of the 44 patients with back pain never returned to work. That’s a pretty high rate of success!
Also, they discovered that chiropractic reduced sick leave time by two thirds compared to what experienced with conventional medical treatment.

The staff at the hospital totally supported the chiropractor and his work, both before they found out the results and after.

The results were a big plus to the entire field of chiropractic, and inspired researchers to recommend that the Norwegian government “increase reference to chiropractors in treating patients with neuromusculoskeletal dysfunctions… We believe the inclusion of chiropractors within hospital orthopedic departments is feasible and provides a patient care resource that may benefit not only the patients but also the department as a whole.”

What’s the bottom line on this story? The next time you get bad back pain, remember that it could be something as simple as a misalignment! Dr. Bendiks is a board-certified chiropractic orthopedist, specializing the non-surgical branch of orthopedics. This is the highest certification attainable in the field of chiropractic medicine, making Dr. Bendiks more of an expert in spinal conditions than your average chiropractor. So if you're searching for a chiropractor who can truly heal, contact our office in Naperville, IN today at (630) 301-0054.

Reference

 Orlin, J.R. and Didriksen, A. Results of chiropractic treatment of lumbopelvic fixation in 44 patients of an orthopedic department. Journal of Manipulative Physiological Therapeutics 2007; 30(2):135-9.