In todays lesson we are going to discuss strokes. The stroke myth in chiropractic is one of those things that we absolutely cannot ignore and we have to deal with it. And in order to deal with it, is it essential that we take into consideration all of the relevant information that is out in the public.
And that’s both PRO and CON. But you cannot dispute actual research and I’m gonna share a little bit of that with you today. So I wan’t to start by saying “Hey if you have somebody in your office and you adjust them and all of they sudden they start getting dizzy and they start vomiting, don’t run to the telephone to call me. Call 911! That is the number one thing you can do to not only save that person, but save yourself at the same time”.
I get those calls. People don’t believe it when I tell them that people are actually calling me “Hey I’ve got someone vomiting all over the place what do I do?” Well what am I gonna do to help you at that point. But with the strokes situations. The faster you get emergency medical attention the better the outcome will be for that patient. If you prolong it, it could be a disaster for both the patient and for you.
So don’t be afraid, if an ambulance shows up to your door, they can show up because someone passed out or anything else. It doesn’t always have to do with you. You do the right thing by the patient and it will also help protect you at the same time. So let’s talk about strokes in the United States. 750,000 stokes occur in the US annually.
But strokes arising from dissection, which is what we are associated with, are rate of 1 per 133,000 people. If there are 315 million people in the US we can expect 2,368 of these strokes to occur each year. That means that we are not even associated in anyone’s mind with 750,000 of them. So strokes annually in the US, ours that we have any association are so insignificant. But to us they are everything.
And if you think about it, if an average of 10% of the US population seeks chiropractic care annually then we could anticipate about 237 dissections leading to strokes to cross the path of chiropractor this year. And if we have 65,000 practicing doctors that means that 1 in 275 chiropractors will have a patient that winds up with the dissection leading to stroke each in every year.
So as much as that sounds that nothing, it’s everything if it’s you. Realize that its estimated that one vertebral artery related stroke is associated, and I’m using specific words with you here so I hope you are hearing me not say cause, but have an association, with 1 to 2 millions cervical adjustments.