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The Canadian Study

In 1985, a landmark study was published in the Canadian Family Physician which researched the effects of chiropractic adjustments for people with severe and chronic lower back pain. The approximately 300 subjects in this study had been "totally disabled" by back pain for an average of seven years, and had gone through the full gamut of standard medical interventions.

The study found that after two to three weeks of daily chiropractic adjustments, between 79 and 93 percent of those patients without spinal stenosis (narrowed spinal cord) had good to excellent results, reporting substantially decreased pain and increased mobility. Even among those with a congenitally or developmentally narrowed spinal cord, a significant number showed substantial improvement. Remember that every single one of these people had gone through extensive, unsuccessful medical treatment prior to being allowed to participate as a research subject. After chiropractic treatment, over 70 percent of those studied were improved to the point of having no work restrictions. Moreover, follow-up a year later demonstrated that the changes were long-lasting.

These results are remarkable, but what was extraordinary about the Canadian study was the fact that it was jointly administered by Dr. J.R. Cassidy, a chiropractor, and Dr. W.H. Kirkaldy-Willis, a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon. In 1993 Dr. Cassidy became the first chiropractor to be named research director of a university orthopedics department, at the University of Saskatchewan where this research was done.

The landmark Canadian study clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of chiropractic adjustments for treating chronic lower back pain, even when standard medical interventions have been exhausted. Yet, sadly, many physicians seem unaware of this study and too few take the logical next step of referring patients with these symptoms to a chiropractor.

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