The Need For Scrutiny

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The 30-Second Skinny There's little better evidence for an intervention than the double blind randomized placebo controlled trial, but these trials still need to be properly scrutinized. In one double blind trial on acupuncture as a treatment for smoking cessation, the drop-outs were distributed across the three groups in a way that suggested that the blinding simply hadn't worked, making the resulting evidence all but worthless.

The Beacon Writes NICE

Dear sirs/mesdames,

Peter Littlejohns was recently paraphrased by the BBC in an article about the recent and controversial decision to support complementary and alternative medicines such as acupuncture and chiropractic, despite there being no evidence that they work better than treatments mentioned in previous advice. Littlejohns stated that:

the costs to the NHS would be minimal - in the order of £77,000 - because they are offset by the savings in terms of reducing future disability and healthcare needs and moving away from treatments with little supportive evidence.

This seems to suggest that these treatments have some kind of long-term benefit that rest, exercise and painkillers do not. I was wondering what supportive evidence NICE has that these expensive CAM measures are a long-term solution to back pain? Littlejohns quotes a specific figure, so I am assuming that the evidence exists and is robust; I'd be very keen to see it.

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Kind regards,

Beacon Schuler.