The family of a woman who died of a stroke after undergoing a chiropractic neck adjustment is overjoyed that a coroner's jury has ruled her death an accident.
The finding means that the jury established a relationship between the chiropractic treatment and the stroke that ultimately killed 45-year-old Lana Dale Lewis, said Amani Oakley, the family's lawyer.
"This is a complete and utter victory," Ms. Oakley said Friday.
But the lawyer for the Canadian Chiropractic Association and the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College called the decision "a massive miscarriage of justice."
Tim Danson, who announced plans to appeal the decision, said that two neurologists who concluded that Ms. Lewis had died of natural causes were not permitted to testify.
"That is an unacceptable ruling, and we'll take that to the appeal court," he said.
Coroner's inquests aren't intended to assign blame and typically give their juries five choices when ruling on a fatality: suicide, homicide, undetermined, accidental or natural. For Ms. Lewis's family, Friday's conclusion that death was an accident will bolster their multimillion-dollar lawsuit against her chiropractor, Philip Emanuele.
By rejecting arguments that Ms. Lewis, a mother of three, died of natural or undetermined causes, the coroner's jury has dealt a blow to the chiropractic community's struggle for legitimacy.
About 4.5-million people pay an annual visit to one of Canada's 5,300 chiropractors, about 40 per cent of whom practise in Ontario. The inquest has subjected the chiropractic industry to terrible publicity, with billings of some practitioners reportedly down by more than 20 per cent.
In August of 1996, Ms. Lewis sought headache relief, as she had done many times before, by visiting her chiropractor for a neck adjustment. Later that day, her family says, she complained of a sore neck. She suffered a minor stroke three days later, followed by a more serious one. Seventeeen days after her treatment, she was dead.
The inquest is only the second in Canada to examine the procedure. The other — held in Saskatoon in 1998 — recommended that more research be carried out into the relationship between stroke and neck manipulation.
The Canadian Chiropractic Association and the Toronto-based Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College have spent millions of dollars defending at the inquest the practice of neck manipulation. They argue that neck adjustments are safe, with a minimal risk of a stroke, and that Ms. Lewis died of natural causes.
Medical critics of the procedure argue that twisting the neck also twists the vertebral artery that goes up the back of the neck. They say this can tear the artery's inner lining, causing a blood clot to form over the lesion. The clot can then travel into the brain and trigger a stroke.
With a report from Canadian Press
