When a patient has a problem, the first thing the chiropractor needs to do is a differential diagnosis to determine whether the vertebral column is producing symptoms of a visceral disease, or whether a visceral disease is producing symptoms in the vertebral column. For instance, breathing is an action which ôstraddles the somatovisceral interfaceö and so although there is so far no direct evidence for the beneficial effects of chiropractic adjustment in patients with respiratory disorders, it is believed that chiropractic techniques have a role to play in managing these patients on a musculoskeletal basis (Masarsky and Weber, 1997).
Although the standard lung tests do not indicate the presence of vertebral subluxation complex (VSC), they can give an idea of the muscle tone of the respiratory smooth and skeletal muscles, which gives the chiropractor a clue to the clinical outcome of treatment. Treatment of the VSC in pulmonary patients can reduce the stress of deep breathing and relieve dyspnea (Masarsky and Weber, 1997). These authors reported on six patients with dyspnea which disappeared when VSC treatment was administered. The termed this symptom ôsomatic dyspnea.ö The benefits of VSC treatment do not always show up on traditional respiratory assessment tests such as lung volumes, or may precede improvements in them, as in the case of dyspnea.
Improvement after VSC treatment has been seen in COPD patients, even though their lung volume data did not show it. The authors suggest that VSC could cause breathing to become more difficult even before actual obstruction occurs. Chiropractic manipulation has also proven helpful in asthma in children and this was verified clinically by an increase of 25 percent in peak flow volume. It was shown in a retrospective study that those who had a milder form of asthma and an earlier age of onset derived more benefit from chiropractic treatments. These types of results ad...