Complementary therapies in medicine
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Complement Ther Med · Feb 2010
Acupuncturists' perspectives on outcome measures to evaluate acupuncture care for chronic low back pain.
To examine Australian acupuncturists' perspectives of: chronic low back pain outcome domains; their use of outcome measures to assess chronic low back pain; and their attitudes and perceptions of barriers to using the existing measures to evaluate acupuncture care for chronic low back pain. ⋯ The findings of this study suggest that a broad range of outcome measures are required to adequately assess chronic low back pain acupuncture care outcomes. While numerous outcome measures have been developed that are relevant to chronic low back pain care, whether these measures are appropriate for use by acupuncturists is unclear. Further studies are warranted to explore if established outcome measures are useful to evaluate chronic low back acupuncture care.
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To assess the effectiveness of acupressure for the symptomatic treatment of primary dysmenorrhoea from randomised controlled trials (RCTs). ⋯ The available data from RCTs suggest that acupressure alleviates menstrual pain. These results were limited by the small number of trials. Well-designed RCTs with rigorous methods of randomisation, and adequately concealed allocation, are needed.