Objective: The purpose of this paper is to report the health outcomes following upper cervical chiropractic care for a four-year-old male patient with frontal lobe seizures.
Clinical Features: A four-year-old male presented for chiropractic care with facial pursing of the lips, loss of balance and delayed speech. He experienced seizures daily with as many as three seizures per day. He had been diagnosed with intractable frontal lobe epilepsy at the age of eighteen-months by a neurologist. Seizures were previously uncontrolled with the use of antiepileptic drugs. His parents sought chiropractic care to improve his quality of life.
Intervention and Outcomes: A thorough case history, physical examination, and chiropractic examination revealed that the patient had a subluxation of the C1 (atlas) vertebra. The patient was analyzed at each visit with the use of skin temperature differentials and received adjustments utilizing Activator technique. The parents noticed improvements in the boy’s quality of life as a result of a reduction in the frequency of seizure episodes after initiating chiropractic care.
Conclusion: Chiropractic care may be a beneficial approach in reducing the frequency of seizures and improving the quality of life for patients with intractable epilepsy. However, further studies will be necessary to explain and validate the benefit of chiropractic care for individuals diagnosed with seizure disorders.
Author keywords: Activator technique, chiropractic, vertebral subluxation, adjustment, epilepsy, frontal lobe, seizures, paraspinal thermography, mastoid fossa
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