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Geelong woman suing massage therapist over stroke claims
ABC NEWS (Australia)
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7/31/2024
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.
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00:00
Keeping a house running with 4 kids is a tough task. For Sheridan Digby, suffering a stroke
00:07
in 2019 and losing her husband the following year made it even tougher.
00:13
It's like an invisible illness. People can't see, people don't automatically look at you
00:18
and assume you've had a stroke because you're not paralysed on one side. Having less vision
00:23
makes everything harder, having fatigue makes everything harder.
00:27
Ms Digby has launched legal action against the masseuse and clinic where she received
00:31
a massage the day before her stroke, alleging the treatment caused or contributed to tears
00:37
in two of her neck arteries, leading to her stroke.
00:40
The masseuse and clinic have denied liability, with the masseuse saying they were extremely
00:44
disappointed by the legal claim and denied the allegations outright. They said they felt
00:50
for Ms Digby and wished her well, but said they were absolutely confident expert evidence
00:55
would prove they did not cause her injuries.
00:58
The ABC spoke to a leading expert confirming that yes, a massage could cause a stroke,
01:03
but they also stressed that it's an extremely rare occurrence. The key link between any
01:08
sufficiently hard neck treatment and a potential stroke is the tearing of an artery's inner
01:13
lining, termed an arterial dissection. These do cause blood clots and strokes.
01:19
Certainly massage is a less common precipitate of a dissection, certainly for more forceful
01:24
and violent things like a severe car whiplash injury would be a more common triggering event
01:30
for a dissection, but could a massage in theory cause a dissection? I think it could if it
01:36
was forceful enough.
01:39
Paul Burns is another Victorian who suffered a stroke shortly after receiving a massage.
01:44
I was there in the morning and by the afternoon I was in hospital.
01:47
The impact on his ability to parent his young children has been the hardest effect of his
01:51
stroke.
01:52
My eldest will have a little bit of a grasp on it, but my youngest will never know me
01:58
at my best. He'll never know me pre-injury.
02:00
Sheridan Digby's case is set to be heard next year.
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