Acupuncture Reduces Surgery Rate More Than 30% for Back Pain

A research report now shows that surgery rates for patients suffering from lumbar spine pain can be reduced by over 30% with traditional acupuncture treatments.

The Won-il Koh Research Team of the Spine and Joint Research Institute at Jaseng Hospital of Korean Medicine confirmed that the research, which was based on a sample cohort database provided by the National Health Insurance Service of patients over 30 years old who had recently undergone acupuncture treatment for spinal pain, proved that the treatment was effective in reducing the need for surgery.

 This study investigated 502,264 lumbar spinal pain patient cases spanning seven years from 2004 to 2010. Of this pool, 138,207 patients began acupuncture treatment at the first sign of pain, while 143,632 patients did not. The study followed these patients over the course of two years to track the surgery rate.

The research team adjusted the two groups via propensity score-matching (PSM) for accurate analysis. PSM is a research methodology that corrects patient propensities for specific treatments – this has the same meaning as randomizing of clinical trials in Cohort studies. In this study, gender, age, income level, and Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) were used to construct propensity scores, and one-to-one matching completed in accordance to each group size isolated 130,089 patients for the study.

Among 130,089 patients, there were 1,104 cases in the surgical group versus 701 cases in the acupuncture group with the hazard ratio (HR) for surgery of 0.633 (95% Confidence Interval 0.576-0.696), showing a reduction of lumbar spinal surgery by over 36 percent. In clinical trials, the hazard ratio over one means that the treatment being tested put subjects at a higher risk than the control group. In contrast, the hazard ratio under one indicates that the test subjects have a lower risk rate than that of the control group.

In particular, the hazard ratio for surgery among patients in their 60s was 0.472 (95% CI 0.376-0.593) and 0.465 (95% CI 0.356-0.606) among patients in their 70s. It was observed that the hazard rate for surgery among patients who are 60 years old or older was reduced by 50 percent. These figures suggest that the rate of lumbar surgery among elderly patients was reduced by half thanks to the efficacy of acupuncture treatments.

Back pain is the most common type of musculoskeletal disease, with six to seven out of 10 people suffering episodes of back pain more than once over the lifecycle. Although surgery is an option to treat this disease, conservative treatment is preferred. In fact, surgery is only considered after other lines of treatment have failed for two or more years.    In actuality, the presence of serious digestive diseases such as cauda equine syndrome (CES) proved to be less than 10% and the remaining 90% of patients were deemed qualified to proceed with nonsurgical treatment. Although surgery typically delivers short-term pain relief and function improved, patients become exposed to other risk factors such as the need for further surgery or post-surgical spinal failure syndrome. Now, researchers are reporting that acupuncture significantly reduces the lumbar spine surgery rate of patients experiencing severe back pain.

Won-il Koh of the Spine and Joint Research Institute at Jaseng Hospital of Korean Medicine stated, “This study is of national and statistical significance.” He continued, “It is important to note that the surgery rate for lumbar spine diseases among patients receiving acupuncture was lower than that of the control group. It is expected that these results will be used as a basis for future back pain management cases and decisions of health policy.”

This study was published in the June edition of PLoS ONE, IF=2.806, an international SCI(E) journal.