JOIN USPeople with chronic back, neck or joint pain commonly seek acupuncture and chiropractic care for relief, but many do not tell their doctors about it, a new study reports.
Researchers said they were surprised to find that of 6,068 chronic pain patients who responded to a questionnaire, 47 per cent reported using chiropractic care, 32 per cent said they used acupuncture and 21 per cent used both. Only 42 per cent said they used neither acupuncture nor chiropractic. All of the patients were members of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, a group model health maintenance organisation based in Portland, Oregon, USA.
Many of the patients studied did not share information about alternative treatments with their regular doctors, and the information was not in their electronic medical records. About a third of acupuncture users and 42 per cent of chiropractic care users did not tell their regular doctors about the care.
Some patients who paid for the care privately may have been eligible for insurance
coverage, said the paper’s first author, Dr Charles Elder of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.
“Alternative treatments work for a lot of patients,” he said, but communicating with your doctor is important. “If I don’t know what my patients are doing, I can’t advise them.” The study was published in The American Journal of Managed Care.