Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic care is often cited as cost-effective relative to other forms of medical care for pain treatment.

Chiropractic Care – Evidence Rating: Low to Moderate Quality

Evidence describing chiropractic care and spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) comes from multiple systematic reviews, especially for low back pain and neck pain, citing low to moderate quality evidence of effectiveness. These reviews draw from a mix of study designs, including randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, and observational studies. While there are a number of randomized controlled trials evaluating chiropractic care and SMT, most are rated low to moderate quality due to the inherent difficulty in blinding participants to the intervention. The body of real-world evidence plays a significant role in its widespread use - common for interventions with established efficacy and patient satisfaction like chiropractic care. While chiropractic care and spinal manipulation are often recommended in various clinical practice guidelines for spinal pain conditions, evidence on translation and implementation into practice is an opportunity for further study.

Evidence-based Scale

Chiropractic care has been associated with lower overall health care costs than other medical care. Notably, when chiropractors are the initial point of care for patients with musculoskeletal pain, they may have lower health care costs in the future. One observational study estimated that the total cost of low back pain-related healthcare in the year after initiating care was lowest when care started with a chiropractor (approximately $5,000). Interventions common to chiropractic care have been found to have reduced societal costs per incremental gains in quality-adjusted life years.