Been a chiropractor for 28 yrs and have seen lots of confirmed bulged/herniated discs. I’ve found in general that a traction table or more recently a “spinal decompression” table along with light manipulations can often be very helpful. A decompression table is just a fancy word for a computerized traction table however. For the most part the treatments were successful. One study listed a success rate with this type of treatment at about 92%. I only remember one or two cases in which the patient had to eventually go for surgery.
I wish MD’s would stop trying to put the fear of God into people about neck manipulations. There have been documented cases of stroke, but these are very rare, especially when you consider how many millions of neck manipulations are done every year. You’re far more likely to have an adverse prescription drug complication/reaction than a problem from spinal manipulation.