Back Pain and Acupuncture – Does it Help?

This is a question that’s been asked many times before about back pain and acupuncture. The answer has never been clear. If anything the research evidence seemed to suggest that acupuncture was mildly effective at best.

There has been a new German Trial published (1) which sheds some more light on back pain and acupuncture for us now.

This new trial took 1162 patients aged 18-86; they split them into three groups:

Group 1: Acupuncture using traditional Chinese techniques at acupuncture points
Group 2: Sham acupuncture, or acupuncture needles applied superficially at non-acupuncture points
Group 3: Usual treatment ( in Germany this is drugs, physiotherapy and exercise)

All of the participants had had back pain for a while, so they had chronic back pain. The average amount of time they had had it was 8 years.

The results were surprising. Both the acupuncture groups did much better than the ordinary treatment groups. But the most interesting thing is that there was no difference between the two acupuncture groups either.

Some newspapers have been writing about this trial and saying that this proves that acupuncture is better for back pain than other treatments. That may not be absolutely right as that all the participants had already tried conventional treatment which had failed. The acupuncture was a new treatment for them. This may have skewed the results as a novel treatment often does better than one that has been used before.

Also, the amount of improvement measured was very small; the authors considered 12% improvement on one scale as a success.

Another consideration is the high drop out amongst group 3, only 27% finished the trial compared to 40 odd % in the other two groups.

So, back pain and acupuncture - does it help?

The bottom line is :

Acupuncture may help but you can put the needles in anywhere and traditional Chinese treatments do not offer any more benefits.
Don’t write off usual treatment on the back of these results.

References

1. Michael Haake, Hans-Helge Müller, Carmen Schade-Brittinger, Heinz D Basler, Helmut Schäfer, Christoph Maier, Heinz G Endres, Hans J Trampisch, Albrecht Molsberger. (2007). German Acupuncture Trials (GERAC) for Chronic Low Back Pain. Archives of Internal Medicine, 167(17), 1892.

14-Sep-2009