ARLINGTON, VA -- Whiplash affects more than 3 million people each year, yet research into this condition is severely under-funded and little is done to prevent it, according to the February 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association (JACA). Although the United States spends as much as $23 billion each year to treat whiplash, many lawyers, legislators, and medical doctors deny its existence, says Dr. Arthur Croft, a chiropractor and whiplash researcher.

This is beginning to change as whiplash enters a new phase of research and understanding, Dr. Croft and other whiplash researchers point out in the February JACA.

"We have always known that chiropractors are effective with whiplash, but there were lots of theories as to why," explains Dr. Dan Murphy, a chiropractor who teaches on the subject of whiplash throughout the world. "Now, it appears that by the very nature of what we do, chiropractors are most effectively treating the tissues injured during the accident." Dr. Murphy points to research conducted last year in Japan that demonstrates that the facet joint capsules and the annuli of the discs injured during whiplash are the very areas doctors of chiropractic treat during a spinal adjustment.

Dr. Murphy is also excited about two studies -- one in the journal Injury and another in the Journal of Orthopaedic Medicine -- that specifically look at people who failed under medical management and were referred to chiropractors for treatment of chronic whiplash pain. "In both studies," Dr. Murphy says, "the results were phenomenal, and one of the conclusions is that chiropractic is the only proven effective treatment for chronic whiplash."

In addition, research soon to be published in the Journal of Musculoskeletal Pain shows that there are risk factors for acute whiplash injury and that chronic whiplash pain can occur even after the most minor of accidents. "We are finding that risk factors for acute i
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Contact: Felicity Feather
FFeather@amerchiro.org
703-276-8800
American Chiropractic Association
9-Feb-2000

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