Imaginary treatment helps chronic back pain

Who hasn't hurt their back at some stage in their life ? Patients with chronic back pain present to the Emergency Department all the time. Personally, I don't find chronic back pain cases to be enjoyable cases. Especially when half the time, it's not possible to provide complete if not near satisfactory treatment for the condition. You see, traditional guidelines don't work half the time . The policy of the hospital I work in dictates that we do not keep patients in overnight for chronic back pains merely for pain relief. Reason being that there is already a shortage of acute beds and clogging up the system with patients with chronic back pains is probably not judicious use of what is already a very limited and finite resource. So often enough, you try and give what little relief you can by loading the patients up with as much pain killers and muscle relaxants as possible, let them settle for a couple of hours and do your best to get them home afterwards. Often enough you are made to feel like the villian as orthopaedics surgeons won't touch them with a barge pole either.

Ir's not that I am not symphathetic. I've hurt my back more than once. The funny thing is , it doesn't take much to injure it. The first time I did it, I was bending over to pick up my trousers in the changing room. Then snap, this crazy blinding pain just shot through my back and I was crippled with pain, unable to move. I couldn't do anything except lie there awkwardly against a chair, trousers at my ankles. It wasn't a pretty sight.

I stumbled on this interesting article in Wired today. Apparently fake acupunture and 'real' acupunture both work better than the conventional treatment of back pain, which is oral painkillers and physiotherapy. Both type of acupuntures provide pain relief for 6 months after treatment.

It certainly raises a few questions like:

1. Is so called traditional acupuncture a complete sham after all?


2. Maybe acupuncture works just by simply sticking any number of needles in your back. No special points required


3. Does acupunture work through the placebo effect?


4. Then perhaps people with chronic back pains are simply a little looney (myself included)


5. Will I be allowed to prescribe placebo at any stage if it does no harm ? "Here's a new special tablet. You'll be back doing all the positions of the karma sutra in no time! Err, no, it's not a polo mint, really!"

If you want to check out the article for yourself, follow the link below.
For back pain, even fake acupunture works.

The excerpt from the original research article is found here :
German Acupuncture Trials (GERAC) for Chronic Low Back Pain

So no magic bullet for chronic back pains just yet. Don't fret, have a polo mint on me instead. It works just as well!