Chiropractic Manipulation as good as surgery for Sciatica

In reviewing recent research on chiropractic care I came across this paper,Manipulation or microdiskectomy for sciatica? A prospective randomized clinical study., published in the October 2010 Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics.  This is a link to just the abstract, but even that is good enough to see what was accomplished with this study. 
The researchers divided 40 participants who had failed nonoperative management including PT, massage, lifestyle modification, and acupuncture for the treatment of sciatica.  Of the 40 some underwent microdiskectomy, which is a minimally invasive surgical procedure that involves removing a portion of the spinal disc that is placing pressure on either the spinal cord or spinal nerve root.  The other participants underwent a course of care involving chiropractic spinal manipulation.
Ultimately both groups showed significant improvement to about the same degree, which shows that chiropractic spinal manipulation or adjustments can be just as effective as surgery for sciatica. 


This study positively shows that in some cases of sciatica chiropractic care can be effective and in the few cases it is not the delay in surgery did not negatively effect outcomes.  When you pair this study with a few other recent ones a picture starts to develop that a trial of chiropractic care for low back pain and sciatica may be the best place to start as opposed to "medical" care.  The "medical" conservative management of low back and sciatica care that includes PT, lifestyle modification, pain medications, and home exercises have shown to not be as effective as chiropractic care in some very recent studies. A recent study on cost found that care for low back pain is less expensive when starting with a chiropractor than when you start in the ER, UC, or family doctor.

Sciatica is not always caused by a bulging disc although a bulging disc may be involved in these cases treating the bulging disc does not always eliminate the pain. What we do is work to stabilize the lower back that eliminates inflammation around the sciatic nerve and that eliminates the pain as well as helps to prevent it from returning.  This has been made easier with our BStrong4Life system, if you have any questions about this give us a  call or email me with them.