Cancer Treatment Centers of America Continues Support of Chiropractic
Jeffrey Sklar, DC, joined Cancer Treatment Centers of America's Philadelphia facility in 2009 and is currently the medical director of chiropractic services at the center. His ability to provide chiropractic care to cancer patients got a boost recently with the addition of a new chiropractic table purchased by CTCA. The table, manufactured by Lloyd Table Company, was delivered on April 16, 2013, and included a visit from Lloyd A. Steffensmeier, DC, company founder.
"Over the last few years, I've been privileged to share my experience at CTCA with many of my colleagues from throughout the country. Chiropractic treatment can relieve pain and stiffness in joints and muscles caused or intensified by surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy," said Dr. Sklar in a press release from CTCA. "[This table] is just one more chiropractic tool to help reduce treatment side effects and improve the quality of life of our courageous patients."
Added Dr. Steffensmeier, who began manufacturing chiropractic adjusting tables 50 years ago from the basement of his Iowa practice: "Cancer Treatment Centers of America is one of very few institutions throughout the world that fully integrates chiropractic into their holistic approach to cancer care. I am confident that Dr. Sklar's patients will reap an even greater benefit from the many features this new table offers."
To learn more about Dr. Sklar and how chiropractic care is helping cancer patients, read our interview with him, "Cancer Care and Chiropractic," in the Oct. 21, 2010 issue; as well as "Interning With a CTCA Doctor of Chiropractic" in the July 15, 2011 issue.
ACBOH Announces 2013 Practical, Written Exam Dates
The American Chiropractic Association's Board of Occupational Health (ACBOH) has announced dates for its practical and written examinations. Exams will be administered at Northwestern Health Sciences University (Bloomington, Minn.) on the following dates and times:
Written exam: June 14, 2013 from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. or Aug. 9, 2013 from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Practical exam: Nov. 16, 2013 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Eligible candidates wishing to take the exam(s) should consult the ACBOH Candidate Handbook for application procedures, forms, and other information including instructions regarding exam procedures and preparation. For other questions, contact ACBOH Secretary, Dr. Wayne Comeau, at (978) 774-5600.
PCORI Approves Funding for Research on Spinal Stenosis
Michael Schneider, DC, PhD, has been named to lead a research project designed to investigate the efficacy of nonsurgical treatment methods for patients suffering from lumbar spinal stenosis. Funding for the project comes courtesy of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), whose mission is to "[help] people make informed health care decisions, and improves health care delivery and outcomes, by producing and promoting high integrity, evidence-based information that comes from research guided by patients, caregivers and the broader health care community."
The PCORI grant for the spinal stenosis project is one of 25 contracts, totaling $40.7 million, approved by the institute as part of PCORI's patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research projects. The 25 contracts represent cycle 1 of the institute's four-area National Priorities for Research and Research Agenda, "a framework to guide the funding of comparative clinical effectiveness research that will give patients and those who care for them the ability to make better-informed health decisions."
To learn more about Dr. Schneider, read our Feb. 1, 2013 interview, "Putting Evidence Into Practice: Dr. Michael Schneider Talks About the DELIVER Study" (an NIH-funded study for which Dr. Schneider is a co-investigator). To learn more about the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, visit www.pcori.org.
Macquarie University to Cease Offering Chiropractic Program
Twenty-three years after Macquarie University and Sydney College of Chiropractic finalized merger documents, making the university the first to offer a chiropractic degree program, the university has announced it will begin discussions with other higher-education providers about taking over its chiropractic program, including staff and teaching facilities. The university offers a Master in Chiropractic.
In an April 24, 2013 press release from the institutionannouncing the university's intentions, Macquarie's executive science dean, Professor Clive Baldock, said: "Macquarie University has recently invested significantly in a postgraduate medical school and a state-of-the-art private hospital ... We naturally want to focus our efforts on supporting these initiatives with our teaching and research."
He added: "We believe our chiropractic degrees to be of the highest teaching quality, and they remain extremely popular with students ... We therefore believe the responsible thing to do is to begin discussions with other higher-education providers who are keen to grow in this area."
The university hopes to complete the transition by 2015; the proposal includes "the transfer of all Department of Chiropractic-taught units and degrees, and relevant capital assets .. [and] the potential transfer of a number of chiropractic academic staff together with their entitlements."
Many relevant diagnostic signs are not performed deliberately by the examiner or by the patient at the examiner’s direction. They are observed as the patient reacts to their condition. Fortin’s finger sign, Minor’s sign, and Vanzetti’s sign are three examples of this principle.
Spearheaded by burgeoning scientific and clinical research literature, psychedelics have reached a level of media coverage and popular interest that has not been seen for over half a century. By “psychedelics,” we are referring to the unique class of substances that includes psilocybin (the active compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms”), LSD, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, and mescaline – each of which occurs in the natural world (except for LSD, which is a semi-synthetic compound).
While working at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the primary care physicians stated that imaging every patient prior to receiving chiropractic was not medically necessary. It was at that point I reconsidered the need for the imaging of every patient to avoid malpractice.
