Chiropractic for primary care

I just read an interesting article about children and adverse drug events.  It comes from a study published in Pediatrics, in October 2009 and basically it was an 11-year study of adverse drug events in the outpatient setting from clinics and hospitals across the nation.  Here are a few of the things that I found interesting from the study.

•    600,000 children per year had to go to the doctor’s office or the emergency room for treatment of adverse drug reactions to prescription medications that were administered and taken properly.

•    Children 0-4 years of age had the highest incidence of ADE (adverse drug reactions) visits, accounting for 43.2% of visits.

•    The medication classes most frequently implicated in an ADE were antimicrobial agents (27.5%), central nervous system agents (6.5%) and hormones (6.1%)

•    Among the adverse reactions to antimicrobial agents, more than half were a result of a penicillin (40%) or cephalosporin (15%).

•    About 70% of children seen by medical personnel in an ambulatory setting are given drugs – translation: when you take your child to a clinic he will be given drugs 70% of the time

•    4.7% of all hospitalizations are the result of adverse drug events.

•    6.5% of inpatients will suffer adverse drug events during their hospitalization.

•    16% of all outpatient prescriptions are associated with adverse drug reactions – translation:  almost 1/5 of the drugs taken are to counteract or to fix the damage from the drugs taken previously – what is wrong with that picture!!

•    Among children 12-18 the increase in the number of adverse drug reactions related to central nervous system agents and hormones and synthetic substitutes.  The rise in visits related to central nervous system agents likely reflects the increase in medication therapy for depression and other emotional and behavioral disorders during adolescent years.

Bottom line in all of this is that for all non life-threatening medical treatments, you are better off trying safe and natural chiropractic care first rather than taking drugs.  Have faith in your chiropractor that he will refer to a medical doctor if he finds a condition that he cannot treat or one that requires medical care beyond chiropractic.

reference article:
PEDIATRICS Vol. 124 No. 4 October 2009, pp. e744-e750 (doi:10.1542/peds.2008-3505) Pediatric Adverse Drug Events in the Outpatient Setting: An 11-Year National Analysis Florence T. Bourgeois, MD, MPHa,b, Kenneth D. Mandl, MD, MPHa,b,c, Clarissa Valim, MD, ScDd,e, Michael W. Shannon, MD, MPHa