Chiropractic care of children with nocturnal enuresis: a prospective outcome study.

Functional nocturnal enuresis is a common problem which causes a great deal of stress to the suffering children and their families. Some chiropractors advocate chiropractic care as a mode of therapy for this complaint. One hundred and seventy-one enuretic children, aged 4 to 15, were treated with chiropractic adjustments, and their number of wet nights was monitored by their parents. The median number of wet nights per week was 7.0 at the onset of the study. After 2 wk without any therapy, the number of wet nights had decreased to 5.6 (p = .01) and by the end of the treatment this figure was 4.0 (p less than .0001). Following the course of treatment, 15.5% of subjects wet a maximum of 2 nights per fortnight, or, where data for the last 2 wk of therapy were unavailable, a maximum of 1 night/wk. This result is less favorable than the therapeutic success of other common types of therapy, which have reported "cure" rates well above 50%. The only variable which predicted treatment outcome was the initial estimate of bed-wetting; the more severe the condition at the onset, the less likely was the child to improve by the end of the study. In the absence of a control group there appears to be no validity in the claim that chiropractic is a treatment of choice for functional nocturnal enuresis.