ArticleEvidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM2013
Standardized versus Individualized Acupuncture for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
Article in Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT00758017 (Efficacy of Different Acupuncture Methods for Chronic Low Back Pain), which is not on this map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Efficacy of Different Acupuncture Methods for Chronic Low Back Pain
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acupuncture in chronic aspecific low back pain: a Bayesian network meta-analysis.Journal of orthopaedic surgery and research · 2022Pooled it
- Acupuncture for chronic nonspecific low back pain.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2020Pooled it
- Trial
- Dose-Response Relationship Between Acupuncture Parameters and Pain Reduction in Chronic Non-Specific Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of pain research · 2026Review
- Development of Provisional Acupuncture Guidelines for Pelvic Pain in Endometriosis Using an e-Delphi Consensus Process.Journal of integrative and complementary medicine · 2023Article
- How to design high quality acupuncture trials-a consensus informed by evidence.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2022Article
- Patients' perceptions on non-specific effects of acupuncture: Qualitative comparison between responders and non-responders.Integrative medicine research · 2022Article
- Deep autoencoder-powered pattern identification of sleep disturbance using multi-site cross-sectional survey data.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- Comparison of Swiss versus Standard Acupuncture in Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain. A Study Protocol for a Randomized, Controlled, Single-Blind, Parallel Trial.Journal of pain research · 2022Article
- A Comprehensive Review of Alternative Therapies for the Management of Chronic Pain Patients: Acupuncture, Tai Chi, Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine, and Chiropractic Care.Advances in therapy · 2021Review
- Acupuncture therapy for chronic low back pain: protocol of a prospective, multi-center, registry study.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2019Article
- Acupuncture and Neural Mechanism in the Management of Low Back Pain-An Update.Medicines (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Review
- Integrating complementary/alternative medicine into primary care: evaluating the evidence and appropriate implementation.International journal of general medicine · 2015Review
- Efficacy of Acupuncture versus Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill in Treatment of Moderate-to-Severe Dysmenorrhea: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We aimed to compare the effectiveness of standardized and individualized acupuncture treatment in patients with chronic low back pain. A single-center randomized controlled single-blind trial was performed in a general medical practice in Germany run by a Chinese-born medical doctor trained in western and Chinese medicine. One hundred and fifty outpatients with chronic low back pain were randomly allocated to two groups (78 standardized and 72 individualized acupuncture). Patients received either standardized acupuncture or individualized acupuncture. Treatment encompassed between 10 and 15 treatments based on individual symptoms with two treatments per week. The main outcome measure was the area under the curve (AUC) summarizing eight weeks of daily rated pain severity measured with a visual analogue scale (0 mm = no pain, 100 mm = worst imaginable pain). No significant differences between groups were observed for the AUC (individualized acupuncture mean: 1768.7 (95% CI, 1460.4; 2077.1); standardized acupuncture 1482.9 (1177.2; 1788.7); group difference, 285.8 (-33.9; 605.5) P = 0.080). In this single-center trial, individualized acupuncture was not superior to standardized acupuncture for patients suffering from chronic pain. As a next step, a multicenter noninferiority study should be performed to investigate whether standardised acupuncture treatment for chronic low back pain might be applicable in a broader usual care setting. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00758017.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.