Cost of chiropractic versus medical management of adults with spine-related musculoskeletal pain: a systematic review.

Patients with spine-related musculoskeletal pain who consulted a chiropractor as their initial provider incurred substantially decreased downstream healthcare services and associated costs, resulting in lower overall healthcare costs compared with medical management. The included studies were limited to mostly retrospective cohorts of large databases. Given the consistency of outcomes reported, further investigation with higher-level designs is warranted.