117 conditions helped
Acupuncture has evidence for over 117 different conditions
Safe for patients
Acupuncture has been found Safe in the hands of trained practitioners
Strong evidence
Over 46 different health conditions with strong to moderate evidence from treatment with acupuncture
Positive recommendations
Over a 27 year period, there's been 2189 recommendations for over 204 health problems
ACUPUNCTURE RESEARCH
Research for acupuncture as a medical treatment has grown rapidly in the past two decades, over this period, there’s been over 13,000 studies in 60 countries, including hundreds of meta-analyses summarising the results of thousands of studies. A variety of areas have been studied, including pain, cancer, pregnancy, stroke, sleep, mood disorders and inflammation, to name a few.
The Acupuncture Evidence Project reviewed the effectiveness of acupuncture for 122 treatments over 14 clinical areas. “Our study found evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture for 117 conditions, with stronger evidence for for some conditions more than others. Acupuncture is considered safe in the hands of a trained practitioner and has been found to be cost-effective for a variety of conditions
Evidence of possible positive effect
MEDICAL GUIDELINE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACUPUNCTURE
While acupuncture enjoys high clinical evidence for many conditions, translating research into official medical guidelines takes time. However, a recent review examined clinical guideline recommendations from around the world including government health institutions, national guidelines, and medical specialty groups.
Over a 27 year time frame, they found 2189 positive recommendations for acupuncture for 204 health problems, mostly in guidelines in North America, Europe and Australasia. These indicate that acupuncture’s evidence is now acknowledged by medical experts. In fact, this new data illustrates that acupuncture is one of the most widely recommended treatments in modern medicine
PUTTING ACUPUNCTURE IN CONTEXT
Acupuncture has a high level of evidence for a variety of conditions. However, it can be challenging to understand it’s significance without comparing the evidence for other commonly recommended treatment.
Looking at the evidence for recommended biomedical treatments, a recent review published in the proceedings of the Mayo Clinic in 2013 found studies that examined evidence for the standard of care (what doctors usually prescribe) recommended against current practice 46% of the time.
In other words, from 2001-2010, for half the evaluated interventions, 146 in total, the recommendation to treat patients with these interventions was reversed. Another review found that only half of standard treatment was evidence-based:
An evaluation of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found the existing evidence was unable to support or refute 49% of interventions, and 48% of American College of Cardiology recommendations were supported by expert opinion only. In short, nearly half of all medical practices don’t have positive evidence for their use and aren’t considered to fall into the category of ‘evidence based medicine.’
Related to treatment that lack evidence, the overuse of medical interventions, defined as, “the provision of medical services that are more likely to cause harm than good,” is a big problem. “A recent review of global overuse categorised 83 overused or low-value services from studies including large sample sizes (800+ patients). The authors identified studies from four countries and found rates of overuse of services ranged from 1 to 80 percent.” These include treatment such as traction for low back pain and testing such as tumour marking studies for patients with previous breast cancer.
HEAD TO HEAD
Using a method known as a Network Meta-analysis, it’s possible to evaluate treatments for the same condition in a head to head analysis. Below are examples of how acupuncture compares to other treatment.
A 2013 network meta-analysis comparing physical treatments for osteoarthritis of the knee found, when looking at high quality studies, acupuncture had the largest effect compared to usual care out of the conditions evaluated, out-performing exercise and weight-loss.
A 2015 network meta-analysis compared treatment in addition to exercise for shoulder impingement syndrome found acupuncture the most effective adjunctive treatment out of 17 interventions, outperforming all other adjuncts such as steroid injection, NSAIDs, and ultrasound therapy.
A 2016 comparison of 20 treatments for sciatica ranked acupuncture as 2nd most effective after the use of biological agents, outperforming manipulation, epidurals, disc surgery, opioids, exercise, and an invasive procedure called radio-frequency denervation, which came in last.
In 2018, a network-meta-analysis found that acupuncture was more effective than drugs for treating chronic constipation and with the fewest side-effects
SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE
Acupuncture enjoys strong to moderate evidence of effectiveness in the treatment of 46 conditions and is considered safe in the hands of trained practitioners. This strong scientific support is impressive and helpful for patients in the context of a conventional healthcare system where nearly half of all treatments lack evidence for their use.
Comparatively, for many conditions it enjoys greater evidence than many conventional treatments and is relatively safer. Patients, medical professionals, and healthcare administrators can be confident that the recommendation of acupuncture for patients is a safe, cost-effective, and evidence-based recommendation.