On Medicine

Charlotte Leboeuf-Yde

Charlotte Leboeuf-Yde, DC,MPH,PhD, is professor in Clinical Biomechanics at the University of Southern Denmark and works at the French-European Institute of Chiropractic in Paris. She is a chiropractor with extensive research experience within the epidemiology of back pain and various clinical aspects of chiropractic. She is, for example, one of the first researchers to have studied normal and adverse reactions of spinal manipulation in large practice based study populations.

Does spinal manipulation of the neck cause strokes or is it just an “accident waiting to happen”?

There is an argument on whether spinal manipulation carries enough benefits to justify the potential risk of causing a stroke and whether the manipulation itself is the cause of the stroke. To give us a background on this issue we invited Professor Charlotte Leboeuf-Yde to discuss two articles recently published in Chiropractic & Manual Therapies that fall on either side of this debate.

Charlotte Leboeuf-Yde 15 Nov 2016

Flickr, Aiden Jones

Spinal manipulation

During the stretch of one year, about half of all adults would have felt some type of neck pain, and some of these will seek treatment. Many of these patients will receive spinal manipulation and most will probably feel some immediate relief.

Spinal manipulation can be described as a manual maneuver in which a spinal segment is placed in an extreme ‘end’ position. Upon which the manipulator adds a quick, low force and shallow movement, resulting in the spinal joint giving way in an ‘additional’ step, which is within its anatomical boundaries but usually outside the natural movement pattern. This is meant to affect the biomechanics and/or neurology of that spinal segment, which may or may not have a positive effect on spine-related symptoms.