Shampoo and rinse could have cost my wife her life

A widower has begun a campaign to raise awareness of Beauty Parlour Stroke Syndrome following the death of his wife at 51.

Malcolm Crabb said his wife Pamela became ill and was diagnosed as having had a mini-stroke after a visit to the hairdressers, during which she was shampooed over a washbasin.

The rare syndrome has been linked to the prolonged distortion of the neck during shampoos.

Mr Crabb, 49, an estate agent, from Poole, Dorset, married his wife in April 2000. However in September that year Mrs Crabb visited the hairdressers where she became ill after stretching her neck during a backwards wash over the basin.

Her husband said that over a three-week period her speech became slurred and her hands became "claw-like". She recovered from the mini-stroke but her speech was occasionally slurred.

Last week she had another stroke beside their swimming pool on the Costa del Sol in Spain, where the couple had moved this year. She died later in a hospital in Malaga and was cremated yesterday.

Mr Crabb said he was convinced the visit to the hairdressers had led to her death. He urged that more should be done to warn people who are vulnerable to strokes of the dangers of stretching their necks, particularly those, like his wife, who have high blood pressure or hypertension.

"I am not scaremongering but I want to stop people dying from Beauty Parlour Syndrome," he said. "I don't blame the hairdressers but people with high blood pressure should be aware of the dangers and not bend backwards over the basin. There should be warnings in hairdressers about it in the same way that there are warnings about people with pacemakers going through airport security machines."

Mr Crabb and his wife each have two children by previous marriages. Mrs Crabb, a school special needs co-ordinator, had gone to the hairdressers before the start of the term, and her husband had accompanied her.

Mr Crabb said: "After she got up from having her hair washed I could see her face had gone very, very red. I asked if the water was too hot and she said, 'No, don't worry'. I asked her where she wanted to go to have lunch and she just said, 'Please take me home. I feel so ill'."

Mrs Crabb saw a specialist and spent about two weeks in hospital, after her stroke was diagnosed. "One of the sisters asked if she had had her hair done recently," Mr Crabb said. "She believed that was the problem.

"After that it all fell into place. I have since learned there is a Beauty Parlour Stroke Syndrome."

quick hits from:

http://www.jcca-online.org/client/cca/JCCA.nsf/objects/Issue+46_3/$file/Pages134-136.pdf

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-05/aca-ns051203.php

http://www.amerchiro.org/pdf/chiro-risks.pdf

i would wager that most here at FR are frequently "bristled" when constantly bombarded with the nattering slant....republicans are mean-spirited, doncha know

Even the most conservative conventional treatment for neck and back pain - - prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) -- are hundreds of times more likely to cause a serious reaction than the drug-free chiropractic approach to these conditions. Less conservative treatments such as neck surgery are also used for some conditions similar to those chiropractors treat with spinal adjustments. There is a 3 to 4 percent rate of complication for cervical spine surgery, and 4,000-10,000 deaths per million. These risk rates are thousands of times greater than the most extreme estimates of risks from spinal adjustments.

chiros are the conservatives of the health-care field...."quacks" doncha know....(btw, it's the vertebral artery most implicated)

It sounds laughable, but it's very real. Anything that causes prolonged hyperextension of the neck -- hair shampooing, telephone calls, & dental work -- can result in occlusion of the vertebral artery, leading to stroke.

Canadian Medical Assn Journal
November 12, 2002
v.167(10) N 12'02 pg 1104

Telephone stroke
Parmar, Malvinder S

During head rotation, neck hyperextension and other provocative manoeuvres of the neck, the vertebral artery may be compressed at various sites along its course.(f.#1) A 63-year-old man with a history of type 2 diabetes, hypertension and ischemic heart disease presented with symptoms of slurred speech, unsteadiness and left-side weakness immediately after a 56-minute telephone conversation. Physical examination revealed left facial droop with mild weakness of the left arm and hand grip of 4/5. Electrocardiography showed sinus rhythm. CT of the head (Fig. 2) showed calcification of the right vertebral artery and a small right pontine infarct. Duplex Doppler ultra-sonography showed small atherosclerotic plaques at the distal common carotid arteries. The echocardiogram was normal.

Ischemia and infarction of the brain stem can occur if an abnormal posture of the neck is sustained for more than 10 minutes.(f.#2) These problems have been reported after chiropractic neck manipulation,(f.#3) protracted dental work, intubation, perimetry and x-ray positioning(f.#2) and have been described in ''beauty parlour stroke syndrome.''(f.#4) Given the temporal relation between the prolonged telephone conversation and the stroke, and exclusion of other causes, this man's right pontine infarct was probably the result of compression of the ipsilateral vertebral artery during the phone call. He had kept his neck bent to the right side throughout the conversation, which caused compression of the already calcified right vertebral artery and resulted in stroke.

This case illustrates another situation in which a person may unconsciously keep the neck in an abnormal position that could cause compression or occlusion of the vertebral circulation. Anyone who talks on the telephone for prolonged periods, especially elderly people, should consider changing sides frequently or using a hands-free telephone to avoid sustained provocative neck positions.

Malvinder S. Parmar
Medical Director, Medical Program
Timmins and District Hospital
Timmins, Ont.

(f.#1) Grossman RI, Davis KR. Positional occlusion of the vertebral artery: a rare cause of embolic stroke. Neuroradiology 1982;23:227-30.

(f.#2) Fogelholm R, Karli P. ''Iatrogenic'' brainstem infarction: a complication of x-ray examination of the cervical spine and following posterior tamponation of the nose. Eur Neurol 1975;13:6-12.

(f.#3) Krueger BR, Okazaki H. Vertebrobasilar distribution infarction following chiropractic cervical manipulation. Mayo Clin Proc 1980;55:322-32.

(f.#4) Weintraub MI. Beauty parlor stroke syndrome: report of five cases. JAMA 1993;269:2085-6.

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