The
diseases or disorders for which acupuncture therapy has been tested in
controlled clinical trials reported in the recent literature can be classified
into four categories as shown below.
1. Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which
acupuncture has been proved—through controlled trials—to be an effective
treatment, such as headache, knee pain, and morning sickness, nausea and vomiting, sciatica;
2. Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which the
therapeutic effect of acupuncture has been shown but for which further proof is
needed such as Bell’s
palsy, bronchial asthma, cancer pain, female infertility, insomnia, Ménière
diseases;
3.
Disease, symptoms or conditions for which there are only individual controlled
trials reporting some therapeutic effects, but for which acupuncture is worth
trying because color
blindness, irritable colon syndrome, and
neuropathic bladder in spinal cord injury;
4.
Disease, symptoms or conditions for which acupuncture may be tried provided the
practitioner has special modern medical knowledge and adequate monitoring
equipment, such as breathlessness
in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coma, and convulsions in infants.
For the
full text of WHO’s Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled
Clinical Trials, click http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/pdf/s4926e/s4926e.pdf
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