A review of the evidence for the effectiveness, safety, and cost of acupuncture, massage therapy, and spinal manipulation for back pain
PainSci notes on Cherkin 2003:
As of 2015, this was the third most-cited study of massage therapy ever, with 380 citations.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
BACKGROUND: Few treatments for back pain are supported by strong scientific evidence. Conventional treatments, although widely used, have had limited success. Dissatisfied patients have, therefore, turned to complementary and alternative medical therapies and providers for care for back pain.
PURPOSE: To provide a rigorous and balanced summary of the best available evidence about the effectiveness, safety, and costs of the most popular complementary and alternative medical therapies used to treat back pain.
DATA SOURCES: MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register.
STUDY SELECTION: Systematic reviews of randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) that were published since 1995 and that evaluated acupuncture, massage therapy, or spinal manipulation for nonspecific back pain and RCTs published since the reviews were conducted.
DATA EXTRACTION: Two authors independently extracted data from the reviews (including number of RCTs, type of back pain, quality assessment, and conclusions) and original articles (including type of pain, comparison treatments, sample size, outcomes, follow-up intervals, loss to follow-up, and authors' conclusions).
DATA SYNTHESIS: Because the quality of the 20 RCTs that evaluated acupuncture was generally poor, the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating acute or chronic back pain is unclear. The three RCTs that evaluated massage reported that this therapy is effective for subacute and chronic back pain. A meta-regression analysis of the results of 26 RCTs evaluating spinal manipulation for acute and chronic back pain reported that spinal manipulation was superior to sham therapies and therapies judged to have no evidence of a benefit but was not superior to effective conventional treatments.
CONCLUSIONS: Initial studies have found massage to be effective for persistent back pain. Spinal manipulation has small clinical benefits that are equivalent to those of other commonly used therapies. The effectiveness of acupuncture remains unclear. All of these treatments seem to be relatively safe. Preliminary evidence suggests that massage, but not acupuncture or spinal manipulation, may reduce the costs of care after an initial course of therapy.
related content
- “A comparison of the effects of 2 types of massage and usual care on chronic low back pain: a randomized, controlled trial,” Cherkin et al, Annals of Internal Medicine, 2011.
- “A randomized trial comparing acupuncture, simulated acupuncture, and usual care for chronic low back pain,” Cherkin et al, Archives of Internal Medicine, 2009.
- Massage Therapy Kinda, Sorta Works for Back Pain — It works, but not very well, and “advanced” techniques are no better than relaxation massage
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
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