Determinants for receiving acupuncture for LBP and associated treatments: a prospective cohort study

Abstract

Background: Acupuncture is a frequently used but controversial adjunct to the treatment of chronic low back pain (LBP). Acupuncture is now considered to be effective for chronic LBP and health care systems are pressured to make a decision whether or not acupuncture should be covered. It has been suggested that providing such services might reduce the use of other health care services. Therefore, we explored factors associated with acupuncture treatment for LBP and the relation of acupuncture with other health care services.

An integrative review of complementary and alternative medicine use for back pain: a focus on prevalence, reasons for use, influential factors, self-perceived effectiveness, and communication

“…Only four studies had small sample sizes and were conducted in clinical settings [60,61,66,67]. Of the large sample-sized studies, 8 were conducted in clinical settings [30,43,[62][63][64][65]68,69] and the remaining 18 were population-based studies [26,29,42,44,45,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59].…”

“…Three studies using nationally representative samples reported exclusive CAM use (use of CAM alone for back pain by participants who did not seek conventional medical care) as ranging from 1.7% to 20.5% (mean: 8%; median: 2%) [42,47,50]. Among the other studies with large (but not nationally representative) samples, the prevalence rates of use of CAM for back pain ranged from 11.4% to 69% (mean: 29.4%; median: 28%) [30,[43][44][45]49,62,68]. Although some other studies with large samples reported on the prevalence of CAM use, they either combined back and neck pain together as a single questionnaire item or considered back pain within the broad category of musculoskeletal pain and as such did not allow extraction of prevalence rates specifically for back pain [48,54,55,57,65].…”

“…An UK population survey of osteopathic and chiropractic use for back pain reported higher prevalence for these modalities among 34-to 49-year olds than other age groups, higher prevalence of use by women than men, and higher prevalence of use by nonmanual workers than manual workers [45]. A German study on determinants of acupuncture use for low back pain found that acupuncture treatment for back pain was associated with female gender, older age, and being retired [62] but did not show any association with education, income, or marital status for receiving acupuncture among low back pain patients [62]. An US study examining the use of acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, meditation, and tai chi did not find any consistent association with sociodemographic characteristics for the choice of CAM treatments for back pain [60].…”

“…Among a range of CAM modalities, acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy, and massage therapy were commonly used for back pain. The use of acupuncture for back pain was reported in a number of articles included in the review (in the range of 6%-60.2%, mean: 27.4%; median: 13.3%) [29,30,47,50,56,58,[60][61][62]. The use of acupuncture for back pain showed wide variation between population-based studies (ranging from 6% to 60.2%, mean: 22.4%; median: 13.3%) [29,47,50,56,58] and studies conducted within clinical settings (ranging from 11% to 59%, mean: 33.6%; median: 32.2%) [30,[60][61][62].…”

“…Among the manuscripts included in the review, 21 articles [26,29,30,42- [29,[42][43][44][45]52,53,56,62,[65][66][67], and of these, 2 articles outlined empirical findings from studies with small samples [66,67]. Although several studies report general CAM use, population-based studies analyzing sociodemographic characteristics of CAM use for back pain were sparse with only three studies [47,58,59] from Australia and a national survey from the United States examining this topic [52].…”