Please correct me if this is in the full report but not the summary.

Rosie Hunter

This is how the Osteopathys statutory regulator deals with enquiries about evidence for Cranial Osteopathy.

You’ll find some comments on that article here:
chiromt.com/content/14/1/10/comments

I am currently talking to teh GOsC and NCOR about evidence for Cranial Osteopathy and have just blogged on the evidence (or lack of it) I’ve found:
skepticbarista.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/osteopathya-question-of-evidence-part-1/

Part 2 of that blog will be out in a day or so.

Victoria Davies above says:
“For more information you could try contacting NCOR (the national council for osteopathic research) or the GOsC.”

Well I did and I think the results speak for themselves!

That practicioner should also have explained the risks to you in order to obtain your informed consent so you are completely entitled to go back for answers to all your questions. It would probably be more informative than posting your questions to strangers on the web!

But in my completely unmedical opinion, I would assess the risk of dangling under self weight, with the much higher forces applied to babies’ necks when delivered by forceps or ventouse (where the obstetrician has to put his/her foot on the bed to generate enough force to pull the baby out of the mother by its neck).

As obstetricians assure us that assisted delivery is perfectly safe, and as the forces involved in this would far exceed the ones applied to your baby, I think an obstetrician would have to say that there was minimal risk from the ‘dangling’ you describe.

However given that obstetrics was awarded the ‘wooden spoon’ in 1979 by Archie Cochrane for its unscientific methods you might be best to come to your own conclusions…..

I have been revisiting this post since November waiting for Ben to update his article or comment on the research posted by Rachel108 in November.

While I was here I thought that there were a couple of recent posts worth commenting on.

To state my bias, my husband is an osteopath and his treatment on me worked when ‘conventional/allopathic’ medicine was not able to offer any solutions. I have also seen treatment work for many more people (although not all) so I think it is a matter of getting the evidence together to support the anecdotes rather than sying there is ‘nothing to it’.

It is fair to say that the osteopathic community (who are a regulated profession) feel as though they have been caught ‘flat footed’ in the area of research and evidence supporting their profession.

In part this is because most osteopaths are sole practitioners working in isolation and running one’s own business does not leave a lot of time for running research trials, not the opportunity to compare the efficacy of different osteopaths and treatment approaches. However there are now national bodies who are encouraging and supporting osteopaths to produce good quality research. Much of the evidence produced so far has not been terribly well organised, so hopefully this ne initiative will be productive shortly.

Another problem is that the seminal 1996 paper by Sackett et al (www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/312/7023/71)
describes evidence based medicine as a triad with research, clinicial expertise and patient preference at each of the three points.

However, osteopaths with years of experience are unable to draw data from past patient records as participation in clinical studies need the explicit consent of patients. Retrospective permission is fraught with difficulty – not least the time involved. So many practicioners find that their cumulative expertise counts for very little in the search for ‘evidence based medicine’ despite Sackett’s definition.

I think that Ben’s comments about lack of evidence are fair, but it should not be long before that is addressed.

He was clearly bonkers, although jolly nice. Claimed he could cure our daughter through my wife’s back!

One thing though – he dangled our baby by her head and waggled her body around supported only by her neck. I know. We were nuts – why did we allow this!? He went on to encourage me to do this technique – and I did a couple of times. He charged good money for this.

I’m sure if we hadn’t been so desparate – and if there had been enough info around back then (there wasn’t anything helpful on the internet) – we would never have allowed this quack loose on our precious baby.

I just wanted to ask: how dangerous does this neck dangling sound, and do COs still routinely do this?

Graeme

I don’t agree that any story you related about a doctor getting it wrong would be ‘anecdotal’, as much as a claim about any variety of osteopathy: if true, it would be evidence for incompetence or malpractice and couldn’t be used to generalise about the general conduct of doctors.

A personal experience used to support a generalisation about a therapy is indeed anecdotal, by the same token.

If you and your children have personally gained from therapy offered by osteopathy, then fine; what you’re not entitled to do is to make claims for its wider application. As someone said (above, I think): “The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data”.

Thank goodness she found an osteopath to put her right. At 80, she is still dancing ~ but still having regular treatment.

All of my children have benefitted enormously from cranial osteopathy. The one suffered during a difficult birth and would later collapse regularly. The other had problems, following, a road accident, where his skull was hit by a car, like a table-tennis bat hitting a ping pong ball. The third could not swim, except in circles, because she had hurt her leg and one was shorter than the other.

When my friend’s son kept collapsing, after a road accident, it was my son who recommended the cranial therapist / osteopath ~ and he put the boy right. As his mother said, why could he do this, while the hospital left him in a state of contant collapse?

Anecdotal, of course.

Similarly anecdotal is the fact that, though my son visited doctors and hospitals, following his road accident, none diagnosed his broken leg, until I insisted on an x-ray. Two weeks after the accident he was put in plaster!

I could give other stories indicating cases where the doctors got it wrong ~ but they would be anecdotal, too.

Osteopathy works. Cranial osteopathy works. Of course there may be disreputable practitioners, but there are disreputable dictors, too.

I don’t expect anyone to believe me, just because I say something is so ~ especially of they don’t know me. I will just say this, if ever you or your loved ones are injured, or if you know of a baby who has been negatively affected by a traumatic birth, just give it a try and see for yourself.

“Swedenborg’s influence on Sutherland’s ‘Primary Respiratory Mechanism’ model in cranial osteopathy”. T. Jordan. International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine. Volume 12(3), September 2009, pgs 100-105

Sutherland borrowed heavily from Swedenborg’s long-abandoned 18th century physiological hypotheses.

Green C, Martin CW, Bassett K, Kazanjian A. A systematic review of craniosacral therapy: biological plausibility, assessment reliability and clinical effectiveness. Complement Ther Med.1999; 7:201–207

To quote its results and conclusions:

“RESULTS: The available research on craniosacral treatment effectiveness constitutes low-grade evidence conducted using inadequate research protocols. One study reported negative side effects in outpatients with traumatic brain injury. Low inter-rater reliability ratings were found. CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review and critical appraisal found insufficient evidence to support craniosacral therapy. Research methods that could conclusively evaluate effectiveness have not been applied to date.”

www.cranialacademy.com/pdf/PRMresearch.pdf

www.jaoa.org/cgi/content/full/106/6/337