Personal Injury Chiropractor for Attorneys in Des Moines, Iowa

We treat injured people, and we document their injuries in a way that survives the other side reading it closely.

Champion Chiropractic & Spinal Injury is in Clive, Iowa. The clinic is run by Justin Luneburg, DC, FPSC(C), who holds a Fellowship in Primary Spine Care. We work with attorneys throughout central Iowa, including on a lien.

If you're a patient, start here instead.

The short version

Three things make a chiropractic file useful to you:

1. Objective measurement — numbers a machine produced, not adjectives a doctor chose.
2. Clear reasoning — why this treatment, why this long, written down at the time.
3. Honest limits — findings reported with what they do and don't prove.

Most of what follows is detail on those three.

Objective measurement: SpineCAMP

This is the part most worth understanding, and it's simpler than the jargon makes it sound.

What it is

We take X-rays of the patient's neck while they bend forward and while they lean back — flexion and extension views. Those images go to SpineCAMP, software made by Medical Metrics, Inc., a medical imaging company in Houston.

The software measures how each vertebra moves relative to the one above and below it. It reports the numbers, marks anything abnormal, and sends back a report.

Why that matters to your case

The computer does the measuring, not us.

That single fact removes the most common attack on this kind of evidence. Nobody can argue the treating doctor drew the lines to get the answer he wanted, because the treating doctor didn't draw the lines. SpineCAMP is fully automated third-party software. It's a regulated medical device — federal law restricts its sale to physician order — and it's used by radiologists and spine surgeons, not just chiropractors.

What it's looking for

Ligaments hold vertebrae in position. When they're torn or stretched, the vertebrae move more than they should.

That excess movement has a name in the impairment world: Alteration of Motion Segment Integrity, or AOMSI. It's defined by the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment — the standard reference used for impairment ratings in most states.

The AMA Guides thresholds SpineCAMP applies:

• One vertebra sliding at least 3.5 mm forward or backward on the one below it (5th edition)
• One segment bending more than 11° further than the level above or below it (5th and 6th editions)
• One vertebra offset more than 20% forward in flexion or backward in extension (6th edition)

Note the second one carefully, because it's the item most often gotten wrong: it's 11 degrees more than the neighboring level, not 11 degrees on its own. A report that applies that threshold to a single segment's raw angle is measuring the wrong thing. Ours doesn't.

What the report gives you

A one-page document with the patient's actual X-ray images, a table of measurements at each level, abnormal values highlighted, and a plain statement of which levels meet AOMSI criteria and under which edition of the AMA Guides.

It is readable by someone with no medical background. That is on purpose.

What we won't claim about it

SpineCAMP measures. It does not diagnose. The manufacturer says so directly: it should not be used in place of a full patient evaluation, and it should not be relied on by itself to make or confirm a diagnosis.

So the measurements come from us as one piece of a clinical picture — alongside the history, the exam, and the patient's function — not as the whole case. We'd rather hand you a finding with its limits attached than an overstated one that comes apart under questioning.

How we plan treatment

Treatment plans reference the AMA Guides, American Chiropractic Association guidance, and the Croft guidelines for whiplash, along with the current published research on traffic injury care.

The point isn't which source we cite. It's that the file says why — why this frequency, why this duration, why the plan changed in week six. A treatment plan with reasoning written down at the time is defensible. One reconstructed afterward isn't.

What we document

Records that give you trouble tend to fail the same way. No description of how the crash happened. Findings written as adjectives instead of measurements. No record of what the patient couldn't do. Treatment frequency with no stated reason. Gaps in care nobody explained. Causation asserted without saying what it's based on.

Every one of those is an opening on cross. What we put in the file instead:

• Mechanism — direction of impact, head position, headrest position, seatbelt, whether the patient saw it coming
• Measurable findings — range of motion in degrees, orthopedic and neurologic testing, recorded so the next visit can be compared to this one
• Function — the specific things this patient can't do now that they could do before, not just a pain score
• Reasoning — why this plan, and why it changed when it changed
• Referrals — when findings go beyond chiropractic, where we sent them and why
• Causation — stated with its basis, or not stated

Concussion screening

Mild traumatic brain injury gets missed in crash cases constantly, and missing it costs your client twice — once clinically, once in the claim.

In a large study of adults injured in car crashes, about one in four met criteria for mild TBI, and roughly 23% still hadn't recovered a year later. Losing consciousness did not predict who recovered slowly (Cassidy, Boyle & Carroll, 2014).

So "he never lost consciousness" is not the defense it sounds like. We screen every crash patient using current diagnostic criteria, track symptoms with a standard questionnaire, and refer for medical evaluation when the picture warrants it — documenting the referral and the reason.

Working with us

Records requests — submitted to the clinic directly. You get complete records, not a summary.

Narrative reports — available on request, including a causation analysis that states what it's based on.

Deposition and testimony — available. Before you retain us, we'll tell you where our opinions are strong and where they aren't.

Referrals — we refer to neurology, pain management, orthopedics and advanced imaging when findings call for it.

Contact

Justin Luneburg, DC, FPSC(C)
Clinic Director, Champion Chiropractic & Spinal Injury
11050 Hickman Road, Clive, IA 50325
(515) 777-1014

Related: Auto Accident Chiropractor in Des Moines · Whiplash Treatment in Des Moines

This page describes our clinical and documentation practices. It is general information, not legal advice. Statements about Iowa law are for orientation only — verify current text and case law.