Clinical Rounds
with Dr Neil J Davies D.C.

I am pleased to introduce a new series of podcasts on clinical cases seen in the Kiro Kids clinics in Western Victoria, Australia. These cases are intended to be instructive in widening your perspective of subluxation assessment and diagnosis of medical disorders seen in everyday practice.

Headache is a serious symptom in the paediatric population. Confronted with such a presentation, the chiropractor is duty bound to get a very complete history and perform a thorough physical and neurological examination.  There are a wide range of aetiologies for headache in children, many of which are not obvious on cursory examination.

Dr Neil J Davies, CEO of Kiro Kids Australia and author of the popular text Chiropractic Pediatrics A Clinical Handbook discusses headache in children and offers you an unprecedented opportunity to learn from one of the world’s leading chiropractic educators.  

 
Our personal practice experience demonstrates the profound effects of the chiropractic adjustment and it's often dramatic results in addressing paediatric headache cases. Research often lags behind but encouragingly supports our empirical results.

We supply these interesting abstracts for your perusal and a podcast of a case history of a young girl with lengthy history of headache and health history that dictated a diagnosis other than a simple, biomechanical aetiology. Chiropractic management brought about a positive result but thorough history and examination skills were required to elicit the diagnosis and help this young patient.

Chiropractic care of a 13-year-old with headache and neck pain: a case report. Hewitt, EG, Portland, Oregon. Proceedings of the National Conference on Chiropractic and Pediatrics. Oct, 1993 Palm Springs, CA. Pub. International Chiropractors Assoc., Arlington, VA. From the abstract: Headaches are the most frequent cause of visits to primary care practitioners. Standard medical care for headaches is prescription of pain relieving medication.

Chiropractic care of children with headaches: five case reports. Anderson-Peacock, ED, Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics, Vol.1, No.1, Jan. 1996.

From the abstract: In this case series, five children presented with varying types of headaches to a family-based chiropractic practice. In each case, spinal subluxations were present. Following reduction of those subluxations through chiropractic adjustments the child's chief complaint remised. Adjunctive therapy (education on diet, posture and exercise) was not given until the headaches remised. Thus, it was felt that the headache reduction may have been due to the restoration of nervous system function through the chiropractic adjustment. Chiropractic management of headaches should be further researched in children.

Chiropractic treatment of childhood migraine headache: a case study.  Proceedings of the National Conference on Chiropractic and Pediatrics 1994, p. 85-90. As abstracted by Masarsky Cs. Headache and Torticollis (Research review) ICA International Review of Chiropractic  1995; 51(1): 45-47. A case of a 10-year-old male with a three-year-history of migraine headaches. During the first month of chiropractic care, it was reported that he only had two prodromal episodes, but no full migraines.

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Chiropractors, like all health professionals, are fallible and their ability to recognise disorders requiring medical attention rests entirely on the ability to perform comprehensive clinical history and a thorough, clinically relevant physical examination.

It has been my experience that chiropractors who routinely perform due diligence in taking the case history and performing physical examinations have a better than average rate of recognition of these disorders, simply because they practice the time honoured steps of their art over and over.

It was with this in mind that we built our range of physical examination teaching products  and I highly recommend any newcomer to Kiro Kids to carefully inspect our range and specials.

We welcome you to our journey of learning
and to the world of Kiro Kids.

Dr Neil J Davies, D.C.
Ballarat, Australia