A 2019 online survey by Vindengi et al entitled, “Chiropractic treatment of older adults with neck pain with or without headache or dizziness: analysis of 288 Australian chiropractors’ self-reported views” was recently published.
One reason we decided to examine this paper was to:
- not only to confirm that manual professionals (such as chiropractors) do successfully treat neck pain and dizziness, but also
- to determine how often manual professionals (such as chiropractors) see & treat patients with neck pain and dizziness.
This is important to the physical therapy professionals, especially ones who treat dizziness (i.e. vestibular therapists) for one major reason:
- If these patients are seeking out (usually on their own and not referred) to chiropractors for treatment of neck pain and dizziness, why aren’t they seeking out the practitioners who treat dizziness/vertigo/balance dysfunction in the elderly mostly or could go as far as sole clientele — which are our geriatric and vestibular physical therapists!
So to answer our first two questions above, here are direct conclusions from the paper:
Reason #1: not only to confirm that manual professionals (such as chiropractors) do successfully treat neck pain and dizziness, but also
- Most chiropractors reported moderately positive responses (on a scale from no response to excellent response) to chiropractic treatments for dizziness in older adult patients with neck pain.
Reason #2: to determine how often manual professionals (such as chiropractors) see & treat patients with neck pain and dizziness.
- Respondents reported that over 44% of their older adult patients with neck pain were at risk of falls, and over one-quarter of them suffered from cervicogenic dizziness.
There you go. Chiropractors do see of course elderly patients with neck pain and dizziness and get positive results in their treatments. Also, interesting that they mention ~25% of them actually had Cervicogenic Dizziness.
I would imagine this is very similar to a PT outpatient office but two questions to mind:
- How many of our outpatient, orthopedic physical therapists are confident to treat dizziness as well?
- How many of our vestibular/neuro/geriatric physical therapy clinics are confident to treat neck pain as well?
I think these are very reasonable questions and unfortunately, I do not know the answer.
One of our major goals is to merge our profession to do just as this paper proved—a healthcare practitioner (in this case=chiropractors) can treat patients together with neck pain and dizziness.
We do think formal training in both can help and considering neither the big manual therapy training or big vestibular training focus on Cervicogenic Dizziness, we helped fill this gap with our course.
You can learn more about the screening and treatment process of Cervicogenic Dizzinesss through Integrative Clinical Concepts, where the authors (husband–a manual therapist a wife—a vestibular specialist), teach a very unique course combining both the theory and practice of vestibular and manual principles in their 2-day course. Pertinent to this blog post, the 2nd day includes the “Physio Blend”, a multi-faceted physiotherapist approach to the management of Cervicogenic Dizziness, which includes treatments of the articular and non-articular system of manual therapy and the most updated sensorimotor exercise regimen.
If you would like to host a course for your staff (either a vestibular, neuro, sports or ortho clinic), please do not hesitate to contact me at harrisonvaughanpt@gmail.com for more information.
AUTHORSHarrison N. Vaughan, PT, DPT, OCS, Dip. Osteopracic, FAAOMPT
Instructor: Cervicogenic Dizziness for Integrative Clinical Concepts
Danielle N. Vaughan, PT, DPT, Vestibular Specialist
Instructor: Cervicogenic Dizziness for Integrative Clinical Concepts
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