regime with an Athletic Trainer (not a doctor) who saved my wife's standard of living and my pocket book had we gone with the surgery option for her degenerative disk.

You wouldn't go to a dentist for contacts or an optometrist for fillings, but does that make them less useful?

Luckily, I don't have a lot of back pain, so a chairo isn't high on my list, but in my wife's case, we probably would have considered it prior to surgery, since the outlook of those with her type of surgery wasn't very good. Even the surgeon said we'd be better off trying alternates and use the knife as a last resort.

I've heard horror stories of eternal visits to the chairo and then they went to the doctor and had their surgery and "was healed". That probably exists, but I think it's more that the patient was "doing it wrong" rather than the chairo's fault.

The best treatments I've received have always been a system of specialists, not a "one person cures all" approach.

But are they a "doctor"? Not in the sense of schooling requirements. But then again, a Juris Doctor *IS* a doctor, and you only seek THEM out AFTER the ER doctor has looked you over....