Western medicine is all about efficiency. We use standardized medical tests as an integral part of the differential diagnosis, follow clinical protocols to carry out medical procedures, and collect and aggregate clinical data from medical research to justify and select treatments and to gauge expectations. Leveraging medical data from multiple sources and thousands of patients […]

Orthopaedic and sports rehabilitation services are offered through a variety of outlets. More often than not they are multidisciplinary.  This fact is a testament to the complexity of the rehabilitation process. It takes an entire team of health care providers to restore a patient after a serious injury. The team may include an orthopaedic surgeon […]

In my last post about acupuncture research I argued that any ambiguity in study design will obscure output data.  While an inadequate control group or a sub-optimal acupuncture group are the most obvious culprits, the ultimate nemesis is our lack of consensus about the physiological framework of acupuncture, and hence of appropriate clinical techniques.  Fortunately, […]

Pick your answer below: a. Both interventions work as placebos only b. Both interventions are more than just placebos c. I can’t answer definitively This morning I came across Reuters’ coverage of yet another acupuncture study with peculiar results: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/31/us-acupuncture-nobetter-idUSTRE77U63L20110831 The goal of this study was to establish whether acupuncture can be helpful in the […]

If you have been following the developments in the field of acupuncture for the last couple of years, you might agree with me: the field has reached, or is at least approaching, critical mass, assuring itself some kind of a sustainable future. The big question is: what kind? While the mass appeal and volume of […]