Using chiropractic to treat cardiopulmonary symptoms is becoming increasingly common, with anecdotal evidence from chiropractors suggesting that it can be very effective.
In many cases the chiropractor serves as the first point of contact with the health care system, whether for the typical musculoskeletal problems, or those with cardiopulmonary complaints.
The chiropractor must thus assess and treat the patient as appropriate. What is interesting is the frequency with which chiropractors treat chest pain. This pain is are typically considered to be due to due to cardiopulmonary, gastrointestinal, or psychological conditions, but there are also a number of patients with ongoing chest pain that remains undiagnosed and untreated.
For standard western (allopathic) medicine, such unexplained chest pain would typically be treated with pain killers or steroid injections into the chest wall - however, these are treatments that are frequently given when the doctor actually doesn't know what is wrong, and it is unknown how effective these treatments are in such circumstances.
By contrast, chiropractors report a lot of success using manipulative approaches to resolve chest pain which they suspect to be of musculoskeletal origin.
What that means for us as patients, is to consider all the options, particularly when we have chronic pain of undiagnosed origin. If western medicine cannot find an answer, it is worth considering alternative options that look at the body more holistically, such as chiropractic.
