Adverse Events of Massage Therapy in Pain-Related Conditions: A Systematic Review

Table 2

Case series of AEs associated with massage therapy.

Author (year)	Country	Language	Cases	Details of manual therapy	Clinician type	Adverse event (nature and location)	Follow-up
Young and Chen (2003) [50]	Taiwan	English	9	Cervical manipulation	Chiropractor	Vertebral artery occlusion (1 case); stenosis (1 case); slow blood flow (1 case); associated with normal findings (6 cases)	Recovered (3 mo.)
Mei et al. (2003) [51]	China	Chinese	21	Rotatory reduction manipulation	Not mentioned	Nausea and profuse sweating (8 cases); headache and vertigo (5 cases); upper extremity numbness (4 cases); cervical limitation of activity (12 cases); lower limbs motor disturbance (5 cases)	8 cases recovered,; 13 cases improved
Oppenheim et al. (2005) [52]	USA	English	18	Spinal manipulation	Chiropractor	Spinal cord injuries (9 cases); cauda equina syndrome (2 cases); radiculopathy (6 cases); pathological fracture (3 cases)	16 patients need surgery, but half of them made an excellent recovery subsequently, and one-third had a good recovery
Wang (2005) [53]	China	Chinese	9	Rotatory reduction manipulation	Not mentioned	Lumbar intervertebral disc extrusion	Fully recovered (5 cases); foot prolapse (3 cases); hypoesthesia (1 case)
Wang et al. (2008) [54]	China	Chinese	5	Neck massage	Not mentioned	Cervical disc herniation	Recovered
Guo and Lu (2009) [55]	China	Chinese	26	Rotation (17 cases), tendon-regulating method (9 cases)	Not mentioned	Simple soft tissue injury (15 cases); cervical structural damage (11 cases)	Not mentioned
Qu et al. (2010) [56]	China	Chinese	7	Pressing manipulation	Not mentioned	Aggravated lumbar intervertebral disc extrusion	Recovered (5–10 d.)