The WFC Congress – Portugal May 2007
By Peter Tuchin BSc (Anatomy), GradDipChiro, DipOHS.

The WFC in Portugal was by all accounts a very successful Congress, with over 700 DC’s in attendance and nearly 300 partners. Australia had 49 attendees, which was only surpassed by the United Kingdom and the USA.

Professor Scott Haldeman gave the opening address and highlighted the significance and growth of the scientific program, with more than 150 submissions for the congress.

Macquarie University once again had a strong representation in the scientific program with 23 papers being accepted for either platform or poster presentations. Macquarie was also lucky to again receive a research award for the paper titled “The Effect of Sports Chiropractic on the Prevention of Athletic Injuries in Elite Athletes: A Rand-omized Controlled Trial” (Hoskins, Pollard, Bonello).

This is the third time Macquarie has received a research award, the first was “A RCT of Chiropractic SMT and migraine” (Tuchin, Pollard, Bonello) which was awarded in Auckland in 1999. The second time was for a paper titled “A systematic review of functional restoration program with chiropractic practice” (Furse, Saeter, Tuchin) which was awarded in Sydney in 2005.

As you may notice 3 of the COCA National Executive were recipients of these awards. Congratulations to Henry Pollard, and Rod Bonello on their achievement!

A significant section of the program was devoted to the results from the Neck Pain Task Force for the Bone and Joint Decade initiative, chaired by Professor Scott Haldeman. The task force conducted a systematic review of more than 30,000 abstracts, which resulted in a detailed and critical review of 1300 papers.

There were many other excellent presentations in the scientific program, which included papers from Mitch Haas, Howard Vernon, Silvano Mior, to name a few.

Like all conferences there were “good” and “bad” presentations, which seemed to differ depending on who you talked to. Personally, I enjoyed Dr Bruce Lipton’s presentation of his views on cell biology and how he related this to chiropractic philosophy. However, others found his views very limited or distorted. While on the other hand, I had some reservations about the scientific basis of Fred Carrick’s presentation on “chiropractic neurology”, others seemed to enjoy it.

There were also several presentations on chiropractic programs in hospitals in Canada. Hopefully these may lead to development of other similar programs in other countries (possibly Australia).

See you in Montreal in 2009!