Maternal Report of Outcomes of Chiropractic care for Infants
Doctors of Chiropractic have been carefully analyzing and adjusting the spines of children, including infants for well over one-hundred years. There has been some recent concern from certain groups that the need for Chiropractic care in children is not substantiated by research.
A recent study of over 2000 mothers has demonstrated that Chiropractic adjustments play an important role in the health and well-being of their children. An important development in health care in the past decade has been the increasing interest in patient-centered care emphasizing the patient’s own perspective on their illness and treatment.
Patient-reported outcome measures are designed to assess a patient’s subjective impressions of their health with respect to function, and their health-related quality of life.
“Patient reported outcome measures could help transform healthcare.”
BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL
Black N. Patient reported outcome measures could
help transform healthcare. BMJ. 2013;346:f167.
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The purpose of this study was to investigate the report by mothers of their infants’ condition before and after a trial of care provided by Chiropractic clinicians in addition to ratings of satisfaction, cost of care, and reports of any adverse events. A total of 2001 mothers participated in this study with the majority of the children (79%) being less than 12 weeks of age at the time of initial care.
Improvements were reported across all aspects of infant behavior studied, including feeding problems, sleep issues, excessive crying, problems with supine sleep position, infant pain, restricted cervical range of motion, and time performing prone positioning.
Maternal ratings of depression, anxiety, and satisfaction with motherhood also demonstrated statistically significant improvement. 82% reported definite improvement of their infants on a global impression of change scale. 95% reported feeling that the care was cost effective, and 90.9% rated their satisfaction 8 or higher on an 11-point scale.
Minor self-limiting side effects were reported but no adverse events. Mothers reported that Chiropractic care for
their infants was effective, safe, and cost effective. The study’s findings indicate that, on average, the changes observed by mothers were positive and clinically relevant.