Geelong woman suing massage therapist over stroke claims
A Geelong woman is suing a massage therapist over claims the treatment caused her to have a stroke. But it's likely to be a tough case for her to win, with only limited research and medical evidence linking massages with strokes.
Category
đź“ş
TVTranscript
00:00Keeping a house running with 4 kids is a tough task. For Sheridan Digby, suffering a stroke
00:07in 2019 and losing her husband the following year made it even tougher.
00:13It's like an invisible illness. People can't see, people don't automatically look at you
00:18and assume you've had a stroke because you're not paralysed on one side. Having less vision
00:23makes everything harder, having fatigue makes everything harder.
00:27Ms Digby has launched legal action against the masseuse and clinic where she received
00:31a massage the day before her stroke, alleging the treatment caused or contributed to tears
00:37in two of her neck arteries, leading to her stroke.
00:40The masseuse and clinic have denied liability, with the masseuse saying they were extremely
00:44disappointed by the legal claim and denied the allegations outright. They said they felt
00:50for Ms Digby and wished her well, but said they were absolutely confident expert evidence
00:55would prove they did not cause her injuries.
00:58The ABC spoke to a leading expert confirming that yes, a massage could cause a stroke,
01:03but they also stressed that it's an extremely rare occurrence. The key link between any
01:08sufficiently hard neck treatment and a potential stroke is the tearing of an artery's inner
01:13lining, termed an arterial dissection. These do cause blood clots and strokes.
01:19Certainly massage is a less common precipitate of a dissection, certainly for more forceful
01:24and violent things like a severe car whiplash injury would be a more common triggering event
01:30for a dissection, but could a massage in theory cause a dissection? I think it could if it
01:36was forceful enough.
01:39Paul Burns is another Victorian who suffered a stroke shortly after receiving a massage.
01:44I was there in the morning and by the afternoon I was in hospital.
01:47The impact on his ability to parent his young children has been the hardest effect of his
01:51stroke.
01:52My eldest will have a little bit of a grasp on it, but my youngest will never know me
01:58at my best. He'll never know me pre-injury.
02:00Sheridan Digby's case is set to be heard next year.