Review of Pragmatic Clinical Trials on Acupuncture / 全日本鍼灸学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

[Background] Over the last thirty years, majority of researches on clinical effectiveness of acupuncture have been explanatory (or experimental) randomized controlled trial. The benefits of acupuncture in clinical trials are stillcontroversial and most studies concluded that further control studies were required. Standardized combinations of acupuncture points for all the experimental subjects in various past studies have been criticized because such treatments do not reflect current routine clinical treatment.<BR>[Objective] This paper aims to review pragmatic clinical trials on the effect of acupuncture treatment and to develop the ideal clinical research methodology of acupuncture study.<BR>[Method] Clinical studies of acupuncture relevant with pragmatic or individualized trials were searched mainly in Pubmed and Science direct databases. All articles were fully reviewed by researchers, and data were evaluated by usage of a standardized form.<BR>[Results & Suggestion] Pragmatic acupuncture researches were tried for various symptoms (eg. low back pain, hypertension, depression during pregnancy, sleep quality in HIV disease, chronic poststroke leg spasticity, headache, etc). Individualized acupuncture treatments based on oriental disease pattern diagnosis reflexes practical treatments which is more effective than unified and fixed acupuncture treatments without any theoretical basis of oriental medical philosophy.<BR>[Conclusion] To overcome the controversies and limitations of past explanatory acupuncture trials, more individualized and tailored acupuncture trials with the theoretical basis of oriental medical diagnosis is highly recommended. Also clear definition and categorization of pattern identification should be established for further active clinical researches and applications of acupuncture.