Putting The Stroke Issue to Bed

back to the idea that did this begin with a fall, and if that question is still on the table, then the timing would be relatively close to having a fall on, say, the 27th of January or the 26th of January, let's give it a day either way, and then this autopsy being performed on February 5th. Over that period of time, we've all had bruises. We all know how they age. We all how they change color over time and so on, so this indicates that it was a older bruise or not an immediate or an acute situation with a deep purple stain or color that you'd expect. It's a little bit older, so I think this brings back into question whether or not there really was a fall involved. Now, I'm not psychic. I don't know, but the findings from the autopsy are consistent with the fall and an injury to the lefts side of the body particularly the upper arm, upper chest, the left armpit, and so on. That's a confusing point that's come out of the autopsy report. There's another confusing discussion in the autopsy report at the beginning in the summary of events, the coroner makes a very dramatic statement that the circumstance of death was a shimmy of the brain that was resulting from bilateral vertebral artery dissections that were the result of a blunt force injury associated with neck manipulation. It's a very definitive statement. Then later on in the discussion portion of the report, the coroner talks about the idea that there was an injury. The injury produced neck pain that Ms. May presented for care for that, and then subsequent to the ... To care for that, and it's very unclear in the report whether that initial injury was blunt force trauma or whether the coroner's referring to the adjustment that followed as being blunt force trauma. It's, again, confusing in that language. The thing that we talked about from the very beginning in this, Dr. Hoffman, was the idea that we didn't know how fully the coroner's office appreciated the nuances of this whole situation of cervical artery dissection particular vertebral artery dissection and the development of stroke. The coroner came to an abrupt conclusion that it was related to or the mechanism of injury was the cervical spine manipulation and his language or the neck manipulation and his language to be specific. In the autopsy, the gentleman made reference to or cited an article by Sanchez from 2007 that appeared in the Southern Medical Journal, and it's a case report. It's a single case report, and then went on to talk about the idea that based upon this, that there was this tremendous incidence of bilateral vertebral artery dissection and gave the rate of 1 per 100,000 to 1 in 2 million cervical adjustments. Well, that is just absolutely wrong. That misrepresents the literature that was involved, misrepresents the literature that the coroner himself cited, and if we go back and look at that piece of literature, that data that Sanchez used in the literature ... Well, first of all it was a single unilateral vertebral artery dissection not bilateral that was discussed by Sanchez in the case that was involved, and the idea that- Dr. Clum, I just want to point out that one thing that you're talking about is that he did find which is different than what we were under the impression of from all of the reports that this wasn't simply, I'll call it, a vertebral artery dissection. It was a

Dr. Hoffman:

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