Controversial Issues in Clinical Research (Especially Randomized Controlled Trial) on Acupuncture for Low Back Pain / 全日本鍼灸学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

On this coming June 12, 2009, the 2nd JSAM International Symposium on Evidence-based Acupuncture on "Evidence of the Effectiveness of Acupuncture for Low Back Pain"is to be held in Saitama. We briefly outline the background and expected controversial points in this symposium.<BR>There are three sessions including 1) Present status of RCT research on low back pain, 2) Treatment method for low back pain in China, Korea and Japan based on the database research, and 3) Sham acupuncture. When we assess the effectiveness of acupuncture for low back pain within the realm of Evidence-Based Medicine, the following discussions may be expected<BR> 1) Therapeutic effect of sham needling -are we able to distinguish placebo effect?<BR> 2) Masking using sham needle -are we able to conduct double-blind trials on acupuncture?<BR> 3) Specific treatment technique -which factors contribute to "more effective acupuncture technique"?<BR>Most of invited speakers are specialists who published their papers on RCT or sham needle in top medical journals in the world. We hope that issues, such as working together with other medical professionals and reflecting evidence to medical policies, to be tackled in the future for the development of acupuncture will become clearer in this symposium.