Spinal Decompression Challenged
Are chiropractors telling the truth?
- "Stretching the Truth?" - CBC Marketplace exposes the dangers of SBT
March 26, 2010 - What you need to know about a high-priced back pain treatment! Please leave your comments on their web site and tell us about your experience.
If you’ve ever suffered from back pain, you know how debilitating it can be. So it’s not surprising that many Canadians are willing to pay thousands of dollars for treatments that promise long-term relief.
The latest high-tech, high-priced back pain treatment is called “non-surgical spinal decompression therapy.” One of the most popular machines is called the DRX9000, which can pull on your back with over a hundred pounds of force. The Low Back Clinic, one of Canada’s largest chains offering this treatment, claims the pull from the DRX9000 separates your vertebrae so discs can be restored.
Many Canadians are paying big bucks – up to $5,000 – to get the DRX9000 treatments.
But does it really work? Marketplace’s Erica Johnson puts the machine to the test and reveals potential hidden dangers you need to know about.
- Low Back Clinic claims questioned: Marketplace
Back-pain clinics across Canada are making claims about a machine offering a type of spinal decompression that U.S. authorities say is based on “junk science,” an investigation by CBC-TV's Marketplace has revealed.
Marketplace spoke to more than a dozen back experts, including chiropractors and surgeons, who say they have concerns about the claims being made about various types of spinal decompression therapies on offer at private clinics.
Dr. Richard Liem, the founder of the Low Back Clinic, one of the largest chiropractic chains in Canada, claims a success rate of between 86 and 89 per cent among his clients.
- Richard Liem's Low Back Clinic advertisement that appeared in The Waterloo Record on April 4, 2009
- Canadian Decompression and Pain Centres - another company with branches across Canada fails to reveal who the "doctors" are that work in their clinics. One of their ads ran in The Waterloo Record on April 4, 2009, the same day that Richard Liem's advertisement ran. It was a full-page ad.
- Look inside the spinal decompression industry - Misleading coding advice causes financial troubles,
liabilities for unsuspecting anesthesia, pain offices
- Health Costs Management Newsletter
- Chiropractor discusses how to bill insurance for spinal decompression - ChiroEco.com
- Search Google News for spinal decompression and you will find a large number of chiropractors who have found a way to recruit patients. This is not real news. Most of it is just plain press releases. Chiropractic marketers have no regard for the truth. This one from Nashville, TN says that his treatments are 100% effective. This press release was on March 12, 2010. Check out his own web site for "proof".
- The Truth Behind Space Age Cure for Back Pain - Skeptical Inquirer
"Space Age technology cures back pain without surgery—86 percent success rate." Ads like this have been inundating my local newspaper. I wanted to know more. I am a medical doctor, and I wondered why my medical journals had neglected to tell me about this wonderful new discovery. I sent in for the free report.
- Be Wary of Spinal Decompression Therapy with VAX-D or Similar Devices - Stephen Barrett, M.D.
The Bottom Line
VAX-D is an expensive high-tech form of mechanical traction that can provide relief in some cases of back pain but is widely promoted with unsubstantiated claims that it can correct degenerated and herniated discs without surgery. When the FDA cleared the VAX-D table as a traction device, it set limits on what the manufacturer could claim. Individual providers, provider associations, and the manufacturer itself have exceeded these limits. VAX-D therapy may provide relief for properly selected patients. However, there are good reasons to believe that manual treatment can usually accomplish the same thing more quickly, safely, and less expensively. The same considerations apply to the Decompression Reduction Stabilization (DRS) System, Accu-Spina System, DRX-3000, DRX9000, SpineMED Decompression Table, and Lordex Traction Unit, which are similar devices marketed by other companies. They also apply to Triton DTS (a simpler. less expensive traction device) and the Z-Grav, a tilt table marketed through SpinalAid Centers of America, that is claimed to decompress by gravitational force.
- More spinal decompression lies you should know - Rochester, NY chiropractor's blog
What’s the bottom line? Does the decompression hype live up to the claims? That’s a big, giant, whopping “NOPE!”
- Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression – Fact or Crap?
- Spinal decompression is a good procedure but has not been shown to be any better than techniques like Flexion-Distraction.
- Providers of spinal decompression almost always claim superiority of their technique over others.
- Spinal decompression devices are much, much, much more expensive than traditional flexion-distraction devices.
- In order to pay for their expensive, computerized tables, many spinal decompression doctors resort to false or misleading advertising, pre-paid treatment plans and other unethical practices.
- Decompression chiropractors frequently prescribe a 20 visit minimum treatment protocol (usually at about $200 per visit!!) for which there is no clinical rationale. Many of these patients would get better faster with other treatment methods.
- Non-surgical spinal decompression therapy: does the scientific literature support efficacy claims made in the advertising media?
Only limited evidence is available to warrant the routine use of non-surgical spinal decompression, particularly when many other well investigated, less expensive alternatives are available.
- Aetna's Clinical Policy Bulletins: Vertebral Axial Decompression Therapy
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