Instrument Adjusting

Are you getting the most out of your chiropractic instruments by utilizing them for soft tissue therapy? Sometimes a patient’s issue lies within his or her extremities; specifically, in the soft tissue areas of the extremities. When this happens, a number of DCs use chiropractic instruments to help remedy the problem.

With headaches being a common ailment, people are looking to your for relief and chiropractic instruments are often an effective treatment. As a DC, this means that a large majority of your patients are potentially suffering with headaches of some sort, yet many are not receiving the treatment necessary to help ease their pain.

By now, you’ve no doubt read all the literature and heard all the seminars that tout the superiority of instrument-assisted adjustments over manual ones. There’s no question of the benefits of instrument adjusting in a variety of areas, ranging from basic physics, to your bottom line, to your patients. But it can also help with patient retention for your practice.

There’s an abundance of research available showing the efficacy of chiropractic instrument assisted adjustments as compared to manual adjustments. You’ve likely seen empirical evidence of this in your own practice. However, there is another important factor to consider beyond efficacy when using adjusting instruments.

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) reports that approximately one in ten people in the United States—which equates to roughly 23 million in total—struggle with at least one chronic musculoskeletal disorder, if not more. The AAFP further states that these types of disorders are often accompanied by painful trigger points.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, chiropractors held about 45,200 jobs in 2014, most of which were in either group or solo practices, with a few working in hospital settings. Furthermore, approximately one in three chiropractors worked for themselves in 2014.

In February 2003, a study was published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics outlining the positive effects that “mechanical force, manually assisted short-lever chiropractic adjustment of the thoracic spine.

Seth Pearl of Sigma Instruments discusses the problems associated with tech neck on Fox News.