Chiropractic patients presenting to the New Zealand College of Chiropractic Teaching clinic: A short description of patients and patient complaints

Objective: To report the basic characteristics of new chiropractic patients presenting to the New Zealand College of Chiropractic teaching clinic. Design and Outcome Variables: Retrospective analysis of 1,004 new patient files opened between 1997 and 2001. Age, gender and chief complaint were recorded. Results: Some 51.9% of patients were female. The mean age was 32.3 years, and age range was 0-85 years. The most common chief complaint was low back pain (38.1%). Overall spinal problems accounted for 64.4% of chief complaints, and 11.6% of patients presented for wellness care with no complaint present. Conclusion: Patients presenting to the New Zealand College of Chiropractic teaching clinic showed many similarities with teaching clinics in the United States of America and Australia. Some discrepancies were noted, however, between the patient characteristics at the teaching clinic and the general New Zealand population.