Should Doctors Recommend Acupuncture For Pain?

As many of you know I’m a GP and acupuncturist, as well as a medical educator. In the interests of an open debate, I thought that this recent story from the BMJ was worthwhile.

From Soundcloud:

Our latest debate asks, should doctors recommend acupuncture for pain? Asbjørn Hróbjartsson from the Center for Evidence-based Medicine at University of Southern Denmark argues no – evidence show’s it’s no worse than placebo. Mike Cummings, medical director of the British Medical Acupuncture Society argues yes – that there is evidence of efficacy, and trials haven’t been designed to accurately measure that.

We also hear from Kumari Manickasamy, a GP in north London, and someone who used acupuncture to control her pain during pregnancy despite knowing the lack of evidence.

Read more: https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k970.full

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Should doctors prescribe acupuncture for pain? by BMJ talk medicine is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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