Real Acupuncture Administered By A Qualified Practitioner Reduces Chronic Pain, Reveals Study

Acupuncture, the subject of much debate and controversy, has been found by researchers, in recent studies, to be better than sham acupuncture or no acupuncture at all.

After gathering and analyzing data from almost 29 randomized controlled human studies, researchers from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center concluded, “Our results from individual patient data meta-analyses of nearly 18,000 randomized patients in high-quality RCTs provide the most robust evidence to date that acupuncture is a reasonable referral option for patients with chronic pain.”

While some of these studies, notably one conducted by a German specialist, Dr. Winfred Meissner, found that the use of acupuncture to reduce pain in patients after surgery was successful.

However, there are other studies, conducted by Universities of Exeter & Plymouth in the UK and the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, that concluded that not only was acupuncture ineffective in countering pain but it was also associated with adverse side-effects.

So, in order to reach a consensus, Andrew J.Vickers, D.Phil and his team reviewed data compiled in studies in the United States, Germany, Britain, Spain and Sweden. Almost information gathered on 17,922 patients were used when carrying out these individual data meta-analyses – in the aim of finding the effect that acupuncture had on certain chronic pain conditions.

Placebo acupuncture, which fakes acupuncture by the use of retractable needles and does not pierce the skin, were administered to patients along with real acupuncture for back neck and pain.

The pain scores for real acupuncture (values in terms of Standard Deviation) were much lower than those obtained for sham acupuncture and no acupuncture at all.