Deaths after Chiropractic: A Review of Published Cases

E. Ernst

Int J Clin Pract. 2010;64(10):1162-1165.

Methods

Electronic searches were conducted in the following electronic databases: Medline, Embase, AMED, Cochrane Library (September 2009). No restrictions of time or language were applied. Search terms were chiropractic, spinal manipulation, vascular accidents, stroke, death and fatality. In addition, our own departmental files and the bibliographies of the articles thus located were searched. Several experts were also contacted for further data. Case reports were included if they provided information on human patients who had died after receiving one or more treatments from a chiropractor. Data were extracted from the included articles according to predefined criteria (Table 1).

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Table 1. Published case reports of deaths after chiropractic treatments
References	Year of publication	Victim	Type of vascular accident	Time between treatment and death
Anon^[5]	1934	Woman, age unknown	Tear in left lateral sinus	2 weeks
Pratt-Thomas and Berger^[6]	1947	32-year-old man	Thrombosis of basilar, left anterior-inferior cerebellar and right posterior-inferior arteries	24 h
Pratt-Thomas and Berger^[6]	1947	35-year-old woman	Thrombosis of posterior-inferior cerebellar artery	10 h
Anon^[7]	1955	Woman, age unknown	Intra-spinal bleeding and compression of spinal cord	18 h
Ford and Clark^[8]	1956	37-year-old man	Thrombosis of basilar, left-posterior cerebellar and left-posterior cerebral arteries	6 h
Ford and Clark^[8]	1956	No information provided	Thrombosis of basilar artery	No information provided
Smith and Estridge^[9]	1962	33-year-old woman	Infarct of cerebellar and brainstem	3 days
Lorenz and Vogelsang^[10]	1972	39-year-old woman	Thrombosis of basilar artery	58 days
Schmitt^[11]	1976	35-years-old woman	Infarct of brainstem	1 h
Krueger and Okazaki^[12]	1980	25-year-old man	Infarct of brainstem and cerebellum	48 h
Sherman et al.^[13]	1981	60-year-old woman	Dissection of vertebral artery	4 days
Ali Cherif et al.^[14]	1983	51-year-old man	Infarct of medulla oblongata	11 days
Nielsen^[15]	1984	34-year-old man	Dissection of vertebral artery aneurysen	3 h
Zak and Carmody^[16]	1984	53-year-old man	Left vertebral, posterior-inferior and superior cerebellar artery occlusion; cerebellar infarction	27 days
Modde^[17]	1985	26-year-old woman	Dissection of vertebral artery	1 day
Jentzen et al.^[18]	1987	51-year-old man	Infarct of cerebellum and brainstem	No information provided
Sherman et al.^[20]	1987	37-year-old man	Infarct of brainstem	3 days
Mas et al.^[19]	1989	35-year-old woman	Dissecting aneurysm of vertebral artery	16 h
Raskind and North^[21]	1990	47-year-old woman	Cerebellar haemorrheae	No information provided
Sullivan^[22]	1992	41-year-old woman	Haemorrhage in ventricular system	8 h
Haynes^[23]	1994	36-year-old woman	Dissecting aneurysm of vertebral artery, thrombo-embolism	No information provided
Peters et al.^[24]	1995	29-year-old woman	Infarct of right hemisphere	3 days
Klougart et al.^[25]	1996	34-year-old man	Unclear	Few hours
Haldeman et al.^[26]	2002	Previously unpublished legal cases	No information provided	No information provided
Haldeman et al.^[26]	2002	Previously unpublished legal cases	No information provided	No information provided
Dziewas et al.^[27]	2003	No information provided	No information provided	No information provided

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