If you feel pain in your neck, you should think twice before snapping it because treatment through spinal cord movement, as physiotherapists call it, increases the risk of stroke. And the risk may generally be very small, but the link between stroke and neck cracking is real, according to neurologist Wade Smith, who works as director of the neurovascular unit at the University of California, San Francisco.
“Some neurologists believe that physical therapists cause a lot of strokes with very little risk,”
Smith
I do not think that it is so small that it does not support the need to tell the patient that the consequences derived from a stroke can be serious and therefore people should be
Mindful of the fact that flexion of the spinal cord increases the risk of stroke and that anyone performing such a procedure should inform their patients of this risk.
One of the main causes of stroke before the age of 45 is something called a rupture of one of the arteries in the neck that connects to the brain.
If one of these two arteries ruptures, the lining membrane is exposed to bleeding, which in turn creates a blood clot that can easily enter the brain and cause a fatal stroke.
In previous studies conducted in Canada, a comparison was made between stroke registries and other medical records. This comparison showed that stroke among young people was closely related to their visits to natural medicine clinics. In turn, Smith awaits more evidence on the relationship between the two cases.
A team looked at the cases of several patients under the age of 60 between 1995 and 2000. The team visited two large medical centers to see cases of a broken neck in some patients, leading to strokes or other stroke-like conditions. called episodes of temporary ischemia.
Thematic anemia:
The researchers found 151 of these patients in the two centers, 51 of whom were excluded from participating in the study, since they were compared with 100
Others of the same age whose stroke causes were not caused by arterial rupture, and study participants were asked a series of questions, including whether they felt pain in their head or neck 30 days before the injury and if they underwent physical therapy on the neck during that period.
Of the 51 patients, seven said they remembered breaking their necks before their stroke. In the other group, only 3 percent said so.
They had seen physical therapists in the month before their injury. Commenting on this, Smith confided: “Anyone feeling symptoms of a stroke should skip physiotherapy clinics and go to hospital immediately.”
The symptoms of a stroke are:
One side of the body becomes weak, numb, or paralyzed.
Blindness, double or blurred vision.
- Find difficulty speaking or understanding things.
Loss of balance or dizziness.
Sudden severe headache.
Neck cracking is a technique used by physical therapists and is of great concern to neurologists. The practitioner often twists the neck at high speed while delirious.
They are trained in this and in a thorough study of the anatomy of the neck.
Smith says that other doctors may not be fully aware of the dangers involved in this method of treatment.
He points out that many physical therapists are now switching to less forceful neck-breaking methods.