Acupuncture: efficacy, safety and practice
June 2000
British Medical Association
Board of Science and Education
At the 1998 Annual Representative Meeting of the BMA a resolution was passed that the Board of Science and Education should "investigate the scientific basis and efficacy of acupuncture and the quality of training and standards of competence in its practitioners."
This report reviews published literature and research on acupuncture, looks at safety aspects including the possible adverse effects of treatment, discusses education and training provision, presents results from a survey of UK GPs, and suggests future developments for acupuncture, particularly its potential for integration into the NHS.
It will provide doctors and other healthcare professionals, researchers, students, patients, and purchasers of healthcare with information on this most widely used therapy of complementary and alternative medicine, enabling them to become more informed on the value of acupuncture and its likely place within the NHS
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Introduction
Over the past two decades the BMA has published two major reports on complementary and alternative medicine (BMA, 1986; BMA, 1993). This current report arises from a resolution at the 1998 BMA Annual Representative Meeting requesting the Board of Science and Education to "investigate the scientific basis and efficacy of acupuncture and the quality of training and standards of competence in its practitioners".
- Current estimates show that 1 in 5 people in the UK use some form of CAM (Ernst and White, 2000).
- Acupuncture is one of the most popular CAM therapies and has been reported to be available in approximately 86% of NHS chronic pain services (DoH, 1999).
- There has been a large increase in the numbers of individuals practising acupuncture in the past two years; approximately 2,050 CAM practitioners are registered acupuncturists, and 3,530 statutory health professionals are registered with acupuncture organisations in the UK (Mills and Budd, 2000).
- At present acupuncture practitioners can register with a number of organisations, and there is no single list of acupuncturists in the UK that doctors or patients can access.
- Practitioners generally follow one of two broad theoretical bases, Traditional Chinese Medicine or Western acupuncture.