a fashionable practice in France, which worries doctors

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On the walls of French maternity wards, posters advising new parents to take their baby to an osteopath are multiplying, to the great dismay of many health professionals who denounce the uselessness or even the dangerousness of this practice.

Difficult feedings, night crying, constipation, colic, bloating… The reasons for consultation displayed by pediatric osteopaths are very diverse. But especially very common in newborns. A trend that worries health professionals.

“No need for a 60 euro consultation to relieve a child who has gas”

“These sessions are simply useless,” asserts Christèle Gras-Le Guen, pediatrician and spokesperson for the French Pediatric Society. “All these symptoms are physiological and disappear naturally around four months. »

On social networks, videos of osteopaths handling babies are very popular. On TikTok, those of David Yaiche – alias Monsieur Prout -, who “frees baby from his gas”, have accumulated up to 40 million views.

A child who seems relieved, parents satisfied, but nothing miraculous, according to the president of the National Council of the order of masseurs-physiotherapists. “It’s just abdominal massage, simple common sense that we explain in the maternity ward. There is no need to do a consultation costing 60 euros on average to relieve a child who has gas,” says Pascale Mathieu.

The osteopaths who offer these sessions only seek to develop their business by riding on parents' anxiety.

Legislation respected?

In France, osteopaths are not considered health professionals. Their consultations are not reimbursed by Health Insurance but some mutual insurance companies cover them.

In the case of infants under six months, manipulations of the skull, face and spine are strictly prohibited without a medical certificate of no contraindication.

This condition is “never applied in practice”, according to the president of Ostéopathes de France, Dominique Blanc, who explains that “doctors do not want to take responsibility”.

“Parents still bring their babies before six months and, to my knowledge, there has never been a single problem,” he maintains.

For her part, pediatrician Christèle Gras-Le Guen affirms that certain maneuvers would be potentially dangerous, and explains that she has several times been confronted with babies who experienced discomfort “during or after osteopathy sessions”.

“Unfounded”

In its latest report on osteopathy, the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs raised the need for a “register of serious accidents resulting from these practices”.

On their sites, some pediatric osteopaths claim to be able to treat “Kiss syndrome“, which would manifest itself by repeated crying and an arched posture, linked to a blockage at the neck.

Problem: “It doesn’t exist. This is not a medical diagnosis. We give a syndrome name to common symptoms in infants,” protests Fabienne Kochert, private pediatrician and former president of the French Association of Ambulatory Pediatrics.

Faced with certain excesses in the profession, the French Academy of Medicine recalled this week that visceral and cranial osteopathy practices are “without proven scientific basis”, with “unproven” effectiveness and safety.

Concerning plagiocephaly – a deformation of the infant's head and a frequent reason for consultation – the French High Authority for Health reaffirmed to AFP that “the scientific data does not allow osteopathy to be recommended”.

The French Academy of Medicine – whose opinions have no legal status but have medical reference value – has thus “denounced the advertisements » promoting these practices in maternity wards.

“If a child is healthy, he does not need an osteopath. And if he has a pathology, he needs a health professional,” summarizes Pascale Mathieu.

Source: AFP.

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