Acupuncture for Chronic Pain

Acupuncture Accepted as

“Reasonable Option” for Chronic Pain

Changzhen Gong

 Acupuncture has been used to manage pain conditions for several thousand years, since this unique medical system was developed in ancient China. For acupuncture practitioners and their patients, it is an established fact that acupuncture treatments can reduce both acute and chronic pain. However, Western medical practitioners and the general public are more receptive to alternative forms of treatment when they can see scientific proof of effectiveness. As acupuncture and Chinese medicine have gained acceptance in the West, scientific research into the mechanism and effectiveness of acupuncture has increased dramatically. Dozens of scientific studies testing the effectiveness of acupuncture for chronic pain have been carried out around the world – in the United States, England, Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere. A study which was published in the October, 2012 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine provides credible scientific evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic pain.   

 One problem with getting reliable scientific evidence is that even though valid studies have been done, the relatively small number of participants in each study means that it is hard to come to a conclusion due to an insufficient population sample. For the Archives article, Dr. A. J. Vickers led 32 collaborators in a meta-analysis of 29 clinical trials from around the world, studying the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating the following chronic pain conditions: back and neck pain; osteoarthritis; chronic headache; and shoulder pain. The published study, “Acupuncture for Chronic Pain: Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis,” compiled data for a total of 17,922 individual patients. The 29 studies chosen for analysis were randomized controlled trials using real acupuncture, sham acupuncture, and no acupuncture. Results showed that real acupuncture was superior to both sham acupuncture and no acupuncture. The study concluded that acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is therefore a reasonable referral option, and that significant differences between real and sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo.

 Commenting on the study, Dr. Andrew L. Avins, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente, said that it presents “robust evidence” that acupuncture provides “benefits over usual care for patients with diverse sources of chronic pain.”