Monday, August 21, 2006

Does Acupuncture Help Osteoarthrits Knee Pain ?

This question was asked by the German social health care insurance organizations (www.gerac.de) to see if they should pay for the cost of acupuncture. Four German universities joined a study to evaluate 1007 patients with knee pain due to osteoarthritis.

The patients were divided into 3 groups. Each group was assigned to receive 10 sessions of the following:
1: Traditional Chinese acupuncture (real acupuncture) in which needles were placed according to protocol.
2: Sham (fake) acupuncture.
3: Doctor visits with out any acupuncture.

After 26 weeks of treatment the patients in both the real and the sham acupuncture groups had greater improvement in the pain level than those who went to the doctor's offices. However, an interesting and unexpected finding was that there was no difference in the level of pain reduction between the sham and the real acupuncture treatments.

So how can these results be explained? Is it that feeling like you're going to get special treatment makes you feel bettter? Is it that patients in the acupuncture groups have more direct and prolonged time with the health care worker? Or is it that inserting needles in the skin helps no matter where they are placed?

The study concluded that patients who received acupuncture (real or sham) had less pain than those who recieved medical management alone. However, the reason remains unclear since there was no difference between real acupuncture and fake acupuncture. It was recommended that the German insurance organizations cover the acupuncture treatments.

For more on effects of acupuncture see Acupuncutre, Will It Work For You. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

References: please see specifc links.
To read this in Farsi, click here.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

salam...eftekhar be boodane shoma, yek iranie digar dar Google...ya hagh...

DoneCheap DoneRight PC said...

I'm not so sure about osteoarthritis but I had acupuncture once for lower back pain and it was a complete success. I'm a big fan because of that experience even though I realize it may not work for everything. It's very interesting about the Sham though, kinda like the placebo effect. I think that attitude and faith probably plays a bigger role than what anyone would ever actually admit to.

My philosophy is that I'll try anything once, especially if there is nothing to lose but pain, later Doc...

Dr. Taraneh Razavi said...

Actually low back pain is one of the conditions for which acupuncture has been shown to be effective.

Ole Blue The Heretic said...

I have heard that acupunture for lower back pain has been studied in the same manner and has worked for for patients.

Anonymous said...

My child had knee injury due to bike accident; acupuncture by Dr. Yanting Zhang of Los Altos in 2000 ameliorated the severe edema within 4 hours after treatment, and his pain was gone the next morning! I read that children respond more readily to acupuncture treatments, possibly because they have no preconceived negative notions. More and more we find that what we think and how we view this existence truly does affect our perceptions...positive thoughts really DO attract positive actions. :) I'd like to work for Google and serve you, Dr. Razavi; I have an RN, experience on the floor as well in real life, certificate for Healing Touch {my teacher was a Reiki Master}massage; AED & Glucometer certified; training in AS Pen and disaster relief in event of terrorist attack [a major amusement park and Sheriff Department requires law-enforcement RN's to know this], plus I have experience in public health. I would love to serve such a fine company who desires to do Good in this world! Please contact me anytime at MySpace email "contact me"...[obviously I won't place my main email on a public forum]. May I send you my résumé to work? Mail stop number?? I love reading your posts as much as I do the Alternative Medicine website. I am so glad you are in the WWW, as there is so much erroneous medical information out there written by non-medical persons. Thanks for making time to do this! Bright Blessings from Nurse Karen http://www.myspace.com/10262928

Anonymous said...

Yes it does actually...

PHORA-HR / SF-HR

Anonymous said...

I had acupunture a few years ago! It was a success but didnt completely make things pain free! However i bought a memory foam mattress a few months after and that combination practically solved all my back problems!

Anonymous said...

Back Pain is a pain in my… well… back!
I was hit by a car a few years ago and since then I have suffered a lot of lower back pain and back ache! I was on strong painkillers for awhile but then I was getting addicted to them so had to drop them before it got too bad. That was about a year ago now and since then I have been looking for alternate ways of relieving the pain and aching until a month ago I was struggling to find anything that helped but I managed to get hold of some Cheap Slumberland Beds and I finally got a good nights sleep! It was great!
However!
Upon waking from my beautiful bed the relief only lasted until I got to work then the suffering began once more.
Can anyone give me any advice to ease my pain?

Anonymous said...

Thanks Best Regards
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