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Should complementary therapies be offered by the health service?
Patients with persistent low back pain should be offered acupuncture, massages or exercises as a form of treatment, says guidance. Is this a good idea?
This is the first time the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK has explicitly backed the use of complementary therapies.
NICE found evidence to suggest that complementary therapies help and will be cost effective if doctors stop providing less proven back services like x-rays.
Low back pain is a very common problem in the UK, affecting one in three adults every year. NICE says anyone whose pain persists for more than six weeks and up to a year should be given a choice of several treatments on the NHS.
Do you have persistent low back pain? Do you use complementary therapies to ease it? Do you think alternative therapies should be provided by the NHS? Are complementary therapies offered where you are? Can alternative therapies work on other conditions?
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Published:
Wednesday, 27 May, 2009, 10:36 GMT
11:36 UK
All comments as they come in
Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 09:59 GMT
10:59 UK
Is the water wet?
If it is, than just go for those therapies proven by hundreds of generations, including ours.
Tibor TK, Neuss
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 09:51 GMT
10:51 UK
Many back injuries need scans and x-rays, because they have been physical and the immediate. I personally am having Chinese acupuncture for something which is nothing to do with my back but it's working amazingly well and keeping me away from chemical medication. One of the things we have got to be careful about with this is that this is not the thin end of the wedge reducing the x-ray services, because currently this country is short of radiologists.
Yorkshire Tyke, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 09:51 GMT
10:51 UK
NHS Doctors are not allowed to prescribe drugs until they have been tested and proved to be effective and safe. If the proponents of these "alternative" therapies can demonstrate in properly controlled clinical trials that these things work then they should be made available (providing of course they are cost effective).
Of course, sceptics might say that would be a waste of time as nobody will ever cure illness using a pebble dipped in oil of juniper. I say give them a chance!
Nick, London
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 09:43 GMT
10:43 UK
This is a big step forward for complementary medicine in the UK. For far too long treatments such as acupunture have been considered by the medical profession as just so much mumbo-jumbo, despite having been practised in their native cultures for centuries, back when western medicine still thought a leech down the codpiece could cure most ills.
[Ambriel], Kinlochbervie, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 09:34 GMT
10:34 UK
Actually iam not sure about whether the complementary therapies are effective or not.Because some of them are saying that it is effective and some of them are saying that it is not effective.But i knew only one thing clearly.Any treatment which cures the low back pain where the treatment may be old or modern. So, if any one find a real cure to this low back pain then please tell it to me,because i TOO SUFFERING FROM THIS PAIN!
varun rengarajan, india-madurai
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 09:32 GMT
10:32 UK
"Yoga has been the only way to keep my back from giving me trouble as well as other health benefits".
With the greatest respect to Yoga practitioners,what has always scared me off from it is not that it probably works,but that it often comes with a lot of unscientific,'spiritual' and metaphysical baggage that I personally,and many others I suspect,find unacceptable and indigestable.
Lee Brown, Thornhill
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 09:01 GMT
10:01 UK
No. It should be for critical healthcare ONLY, and has been either abused, taken for granted, or generally belittled by those who use it for years, like most public services.
The NHS is paid for by those, who on the whole, dont actually use it, and is seen as a free perk by the majority.
IVF and breast implants etc, on the NHS?! Oh please.
Its only a matter of time before it is scrapped, and/or private /insurance funded care is introduced, when our population hits 75 million in 20 years!
Chris Bloggs, Salford, UK, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:58 GMT
09:58 UK
The 'Gold Standard' for medical research is the double blind clinical trial. This is essential for pharmaceuticals yet is completely impractical for any treatment of a physical nature. Until there is a universal acceptance for the methodology used to assess these techniques there will always be a level of doubt. Acupuncture has been found to be effective only in the past few years, does that mean it was ineffective before?
Researchers must accept valid methodology before passing comment.
Daedalus
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:58 GMT
09:58 UK
It such therapies are proven to work yes they should offer them. If they are not proven then no.
We cannot spend money on things that do not work.
[DibbySpot], Watlington, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:56 GMT
09:56 UK
Only if they can be proved to work.
Even if bogus treatments have psychological value and save money by keeping patients out of GPs hair, recognition by NICE will help quacks exploit unfortunate sufferers from back pain by insisting that courses of treatment, not supported by the NHS, or much longer than the NHS allows, are vital and must be paid for privately.
[stanblogger], Glasgow, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:49 GMT
09:49 UK
"Thalidamide ring a bell?
Robert Mason"
Do you think lessons have not been learned from the tragedy? When I say we don't allow unproven drugs to be used en mass, I mean today, not what was done 50 years ago.
My comment is still accurate because the same standards are not applied to so-called "alternatives", today. We do not allow drug companies to do this, so why does "alternative medicine" (that is not demonstrated to be safe and effective) get a free pass? It is unacceptable.
Chris Lloyd
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:41 GMT
09:41 UK
Finally logic and costs have influenced this long over due decision by NICE. They should now wake up to the reality, and extend complimentary therapies across the whole of NHS. One loophole is the cowboys that operate under the alternative therapy umberalla - practioners should be licenced and control in the same manner as other medical practioners
Rajiva Govil, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:34 GMT
09:34 UK
This is a dangerous cost cutting exercise by NICE to avoid X-Ray & MRI costs. GP's are not qualified to diagnose spinal injuries. GP's referring someone with ruptured spinal discs or spondylolisthesis to a "manipulator" could cause irreversible spinal cord or nerve damage. Any suggestions made by a GP is purely guesswork. Take your injured back to a qualified orthopaedic or neuro spinal surgeon who can provide a safe accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment by using X-Ray & MRI.
Jan Potts, Somerset, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:34 GMT
09:34 UK
Should complementary therapies be offered by the health service? I thought it already did. you can get MRSA for free. Our NHS is now one of the dirtiest in the world.
If you want complementary services, go to France which has a much better NHS than us.
John Evans, Caerffili, United Kingdom
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Added:
Thursday, 28 May, 2009, 08:33 GMT
09:33 UK
Get real. We can't afford it.
[LondonRoyBoy]
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Published comments: 466
Rejected comments: 61
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