Andrea Vianello sees the neck cracking of the Unomattina presenter and shudders. “Very serious and dangerous,” writes the radio host on social media, commenting on the maneuver carried out live on TV by an osteopath on the host of the Rai 1 show, Massimiliano Ossini. This reaction was triggered by the consequences that the 63-year-old journalist claims to have suffered in 2019 as a result of this type of manipulation.
The osteopath on Unomattina
“This morning on Unomattina, an osteopath ‘cracked’ the neck of the host live. The same maneuver that caused me, according to doctors, five years ago a carotid dissection and a stroke, as I have publicly told and written several times,” wrote Andrea Vianello on his X profile, referring to the episode from Friday, September 13, denouncing the seriousness of the incident on social media.
Describing the episode in his book, the former director of Rai 3 testified that he underwent the maneuver “just before I had the stroke.” “I had no cholesterol and there was no other reason for me to be affected except for a mechanical problem, although there are no certainties. There are no numbers on this, but there is the experience of neurologists, who say that it can happen and this is something that few people know,” he explained.
The testimony of Andrea Vianello
Vianello had recounted his stroke in an interview with Vanity Fair, testifying that he only overcame the problem after a long rehabilitation.
“I couldn’t speak anymore: I could only scream – the journalist said – My luck was the clarity of my wife, who immediately understood the gravity of the situation and called for help.”
“When I woke up from the operation, which I knew was very risky, I was glad to be alive – he continued – But I couldn’t speak: I felt lost, like a child, and I had the terrible feeling of being looked at as someone who doesn’t understand. I didn’t want to be seen by anyone anymore; I feared they would look at me like a monster. The words were prisoners in my brain, and I, who had identified myself as a man of words, felt that it was all over. But that wasn’t the case: it takes time and it takes the right people.”
The risks of “cracking” the neck
The head of the Simple Operational Unit for Emergency Neurology of the Policlinico Universitario Gemelli IRCCS in Rome, Giovanni Frisullo, has expressed his views on the matter to clarify the actual risks of this type of neck manipulation performed by osteopaths:
“To date, there are no clinical studies that can definitively clarify the correlation between cervical spine manipulation and strokes due to carotid or vertebral artery dissection,” said the expert interviewed by Corriere della Sera.
“It should be noted that if these practices are performed by skilled hands – physiotherapists, chiropractors, certified osteopaths – on a healthy neck, they do not cause problems. However, from my experience in the Stroke unit, we have admitted some patients with either carotid or vertebral artery dissection – the two arteries that pass through the neck carrying blood to the brain – who had undergone neck manipulation in the preceding days,” is the expert’s opinion.
Source photo: ANSA