Monthly Archives: May 2017
You might think that the question asked in the title of this post is a bit impertinent. Let’s see whether you change your mind after reading on.
“Come along for a ten minute taster sessions and experience the Bowen Technique.
It is appropriate for a wide range of acute and chronic conditions, including back pain, sciatica, neck, shoulder and knee problems, arthritis, asthma, migraine, sports injuries and stress. Ten-minute taster sessions will be offered so that you can experience the therapy first hand. Many find their aches and pains melt away!”
It is with these exact words that the Royal College of Nursing advertises a session on Bowen Technique to be held during their major conference on Saturday 13 – Wednesday 17 May 2017, Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre.
You may not have heard of the Bowen Technique, one of the more exotic types of alternative medicine. So, let me fill you in:
According to proponents, it is “a system of subtle and precise mobilizations called “Bowen moves” over muscles, tendons, nerves and fascia. The moves are performed using the thumbs and fingers applying only gentle, non invasive pressure. A treatment consists of a series of specific sequences of moves called procedures, with frequent pauses to allow time for the body to respond.”
Wikipedia explains: “recipients are generally fully clothed. Each session typically involves gentle rolling motions along the muscles, tendons, and fascia. The therapy’s distinctive features are the minimal nature of the physical intervention and pauses incorporated in the treatment. Proponents claim these pauses allow the body to “reset” itself. In 2015 the Australian Government’s Department of Health published the results of a review of alternative therapies that sought to determine if any were suitable for being covered by health insurance; Bowen Technique was one of 17 therapies evaluated for which no clear evidence of effectiveness was found.”
Medline lists just one single trial of Bowen Technique; it is not a clinical trial with patients but a study with healthy volunteers; here is its abstract:
The hamstring muscles are regularly implicated in recurrent injuries, movement dysfunction and low back pain. Links between limited flexibility and development of neuromusculoskeletal symptoms are frequently reported. The Bowen Technique is used to treat many conditions including lack of flexibility. The study set out to investigate the effect of the Bowen Technique on hamstring flexibility over time. An assessor-blind, prospective, randomised controlled trial was performed on 120 asymptomatic volunteers. Participants were randomly allocated into a control group or Bowen group. Three flexibility measurements occurred over one week, using an active knee extension test. The intervention group received a single Bowen treatment. A repeated measures univariate analysis of variance, across both groups for the three time periods, revealed significant within-subject and between-subject differences for the Bowen group. Continuing increases in flexibility levels were observed over one week. No significant change over time was noted for the control group.
So, whichever way we look at it, there is no evidence whatsoever that Bowen Technique is helpful for patients suffering from any condition. This clearly means that therapeutic claims made for it are bogus, and that the way the Royal College of Nursing advertised it is misleading to the point of being unethical. By definition, the promotion of bogus treatments is quackery. Ergo, the Royal College of Nursing is promoting quackery.
If that is so, there is of course another question that needs an answer: Why does the Royal College of Nursing promote quackery?
As I see it, there are several possibilities, for instance:
- They see nothing wrong with the Bowen session.
- They don’t know better.
- They don’t adhere to EBM.
- They don’t care.
- They were asked to run the session by someone with influence.
- They believe that nurses want this sort of thing.
- They think it’s trendy.
I would be fascinated to hear from someone who knows the correct answer.
The BMJ has always been my favourite Medical journal. (Need any proof for this statement? A quick Medline search tells me that I have over 60 publications in the BMJ.) But occasionally, the BMJ also disappoints me a great deal.
One of the most significant disappointments was recently published under the heading of STATE OF THE ART REVIEW. A review that is ‘state of the art’ must fulfil certain criteria; foremost it should be informative, unbiased and correct. The paper I am discussing here has, I think, neither of these qualities. It is entitled ‘Management of chronic pain using complementary and integrative medicine’, and here is its abstract:
Complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) encompasses both Western-style medicine and complementary health approaches as a new combined approach to treat a variety of clinical conditions. Chronic pain is the leading indication for use of CIM, and about 33% of adults and 12% of children in the US have used it in this context. Although advances have been made in treatments for chronic pain, it remains inadequately controlled for many people. Adverse effects and complications of analgesic drugs, such as addiction, kidney failure, and gastrointestinal bleeding, also limit their use. CIM offers a multimodality treatment approach that can tackle the multidimensional nature of pain with fewer or no serious adverse effects. This review focuses on the use of CIM in three conditions with a high incidence of chronic pain: back pain, neck pain, and rheumatoid arthritis. It summarizes research on the mechanisms of action and clinical studies on the efficacy of commonly used CIM modalities such as acupuncture, mind-body system, dietary interventions and fasting, and herbal medicine and nutrients.
The full text of this article is such that I could take issue with almost every second statement in it. Obviously, this would be too long and too boring for this blog. So, to keep it crisp and entertaining, let me copy the (tongue in cheek) ‘letter to the editor’ some of us published in the BMJ as a response to the review:
“Alternative facts are fashionable in politics these days, so why not also in healthcare? The article by Chen and Michalsen on thebmj.com provides a handy set of five instructions for smuggling alternative facts into medicine.
1. Create your own terminology: the term ‘complementary and integrated medicine’ (CIM) is nonsensical. Integrated medicine (a hotly disputed field) already covers complementary and conventional medicine.
2. Pretend to be objective: Chen and Michalsen elaborate on the systematic searches they conducted. But they omit hundreds of sources which do not support their message, which cherry-picks only evidence for the efficacy of the treatments they promote.
3. Avoid negativity: they bypass any material that might challenge what they include. For instance, when discussing therapeutic risks, they omit the disturbing lack of post-marketing surveillance: the reason we lack information on adverse events. They even omit to mention the many fatalities caused by their ‘CIM’.
4. Create an impression of thoroughness: Chen and Michalsen cite a total of 225 references. This apparent scholarly attention to detail masks their misuse of many of they list. Reference 82, for example, is employed to back up the claim that “satisfaction was lowest among complementary medicine users with rheumatoid arthritis, vasculitis, or connective tissue diseases”. In fact, it shows nothing of the sort.
5. Back up your message with broad generalisations: Chen and Michalsen conclude that “Taken together, CIM has an increasing role in the management of chronic pain, but high quality research is needed”. The implication is that all the CIMs mentioned in their figure 1 are candidates for pain control – even discredited treatments such as homeopathy.
In our view, these authors render us a service: they demonstrate to the novice how alternative facts may be used in medicine.”
James May, Edzard Ernst, Nick Ross, on behalf of HealthWatch UK
END OF QUOTE
I am sure you have your own comments and opinions, and I encourage you to post them here or (better) submit them to the BMJ or (best) both.
The website of the HOMEOPATHY HUB gives us intriguing access to the brain of a homeopath. It tells us that “protecting patient choice is at the heart of everything we do. Homeopathy, which is the second largest system of medicine in the world, is a form of treatment which plays a vital role in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the UK. There is, however, a movement to try and withdraw homeopathy from the public and make homeopathic medicines difficult to secure. Our intention is to be a central “hub” for accurate information on current campaigns to retain access to homeopathy and details on how you can get involved and make your voice heard. Without public and patient support we will not be successful.”
Here are a few of the above statements that I find doubtful:
- protecting patient choice – choice requires reliable information; as we will see, this is not provided here;
- second largest system of medicine in the world – really?
- plays a vital role – where is the evidence for that claim?
- movement to try and withdraw homeopathy from the public and make homeopathic medicines difficult to secure – nobody works towards this aim, some people are trying to stop wasting public funds on useless therapies, but that’s quite different, I find;
The HOMEOPATHY HUB recently alerted its readers to the fact that the Charity Commission (CC) is currently conducting a public consultation on whether organisations promoting the use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) should have charitable status (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-complementary-and-alternative-medicines) and urged its readers to defend homeopathy by responding to the CC offering a “few helpful points” to raise. These 7 points give, I think, a good insight into the thinking of homeopaths. I therefore copy them here and add a few of my own comments below:
- there are many types of evidence that should be considered when evaluating the effectiveness of a therapy. These include scientific studies, patient feedback and the clinical experience of doctors who have trained in a CAM discipline. Within Homeopathy there is considerable evidence which can be found (https://www.hri-research.org)
- many conventional therapies and drugs have inconclusive evidence or prove to be useful in only some cases, for example SSRIs (anti-depressants). Inconsistent evidence is often the result of the complexity of both the medical condition being treated and the therapy being used. It is not indicative of a therapy that doesn’t work
- removing all therapies or interventions that have inconsistent or inconclusive evidence would seriously limit the public and the medical profession’s ability to help treat and ease patients suffering.
- all over the world there are doctors, nurses, midwives, vets and other healthcare professional who integrate CAM therapies into their daily practice because they see effectiveness. They would not use these therapies if they did not see their patients benefitting from them. For example in the UK, within the NHS hospital setting, outcome studies demonstrate effectiveness of homeopathy. (http://www.britishhomeopathic.org/evidence/results-from-the-homeopathic-hospitals/)
- practitioners of many CAM therapies belong to registering bodies which expect their members to comply to the highest professional standards in regards to training and practice
- In the UK the producers and suppliers of CAM treatments (homeopathy, herbal medicine etc) are strictly regulated
- as well as providing valuable information to the growing number of people seeking to use CAM as part of their healthcare, CAM charities frequently fund treatment for those people, particularly the elderly and those on a low income, whose health has benefitted from these therapies but who cannot afford them. This meets the charity’s criterion of providing a public benefit.
MY COMMENTS
- “Patient feedback and the clinical experience of doctors” may be important but is not what can be considered evidence of therapeutic effectiveness.
- Yes, in medicine evidence is often inconsistent; this is why we need to rely on proper assessments of the totality of the reliable data. If that fails to be positive (as is the case for homeopathy and several other forms of alternative medicine), we are well advised not to employ the treatment in question in routine healthcare.
- Removing all treatments for which the best evidence fails to show effectiveness – such as homeopathy – would greatly improve healthcare and reduces cost. It is one of the aims of EBM and an ethical imperative.
- Yes, some healthcare professionals do use useless therapies. They urgently need to be educated in the principles of EBM. Outcome studies have normally no control groups and therefore are no adequate tools for testing the effectiveness of medical interventions.
- The highest professional standards in regards to training and practice of nonsense will still result in nonsense.
- The proper regulation of nonsense can only generate proper nonsense.
- Yes, CAM charities frequently fund bogus treatments; hopefully (and with the help of readers of this blog), the CC will put an end to this soon.
I think these 7 points by the HOMEOPATHY HUB are a very poor defence of homeopathy. In fact, they are so bad that it is not worth analysing more closely than I did above. Yet, they do provide us with an insight into the homeopathic mind-set and show how illogical, misguided and wrong the arguments of homeopathy enthusiasts really are.
I do encourage you to give your response to the CC – it wound be hard to use better arguments than the homeopaths!!!
I know, many of you think that proponents of alternative therapies are a bit daft, intellectually challenges or naïve. This may be true for some of them, but others are very much on the ball and manage things that seemed almost impossible. Who, for instance, would have thought it possible to combine all of the following features, concepts and principles in one single alternative approach:
- healing,
- creativity,
- simplicity,
- balance,
- alkalizing,
- maintenance,
- going green,
- tradition,
- holism,
- synergism,
- beauty,
- the deepest level,
- new way of living,
- goodness,
- medicinal food,
- adaptogen,
- vitality,
- immunity,
- live food,
- etheric potion,
- cosmic beam,
- wellness,
- longevity,
- alchemizing,
- elixir,
- superior states of clarity.
You may think it impossible, but Amanda Chantal Bacon has skilfully combined all of them. A true feast, I hope you agree. Amanda believes that “food is as much about pleasure as healing; creativity as sustenance; and simplicity as the exquisite.” Amanda has several cards up her sleeve; one trump card is to alkalize. Alkaline foods, she claims, “balance your pH, making your body an inhospitable environment for disease. Disease can only exist in acidic states, so keeping an alkaline climate in your body is the ultimate form of protection. Existing in an alkaline state is a key to maintaining a calm and joyful life. Alkalinity will promote not only peace within but also an overall glow with radiant skin and sparkling eyes. A simple tip to remember: just go green when in doubt. Our favorite daily alkalizers are green juice, almonds, lemon and apple cider vinegar.”
Amanda is as creative as she is productive. She invented several formulas for the good of her customers: “When I compose a recipe, I draw inspiration from both my far flung travels and my local farmers markets; the traditional pairings of my culinary training and the chefs I have worked with; holistic remedies and artisanal producers. When I create a juice or a milk or a cookie I want it not only to taste extraordinary, but also to work synergistically to heal and enhance your beauty, brain, body and spirit at the deepest level.”
In her pursuit of good health, well being, holism and deeper levels, Amanda created a firm called ‘Moon Juice’ which is “for people interested in a new way of living. Not a way where you have to erase your past, but a way fueled by excitement to help yourself live better. Our only intention is to add goodness and beauty to your life.”
“In 2006” Amanda explains, “I began studying the power of raw, medicinal foods to heal the hypothyroid condition I had had since I was a teen, in addition to my severe allergies to wheat, sugar, and cow dairy. Although I was still working as a chef in fine dining, at this juncture my whole diet changed. I ate primarily vegetables and legumes from the farmers market, and foods that would serve as hormonal adaptogens. Within a few months, I noticed a radical shift. My next round of blood work revealed that my thyroid hormone levels were back to normal. Working in fine dining was amazing, but my own transformative experience – backed up by extensive blood tests, the scrutiny of several physicians, renewed feelings of vitality, and a shift in my personality, immunity, appearance, and thought – inspired me to create Moon Juice. These live, medicinal foods changed me from the inside out. That is what Moon Juice is – not just our products – but rather a healing force, an etheric potion, a cosmic beacon for those seeking out beauty, wellness, and longevity. There is nothing I want more than to share this experience and education with as many people as I can.”
Well?
Perhaps there is something that Amanda might want even more: your money?
Amanda is not selfish; no, she wants everyone to benefit from her inventions. Therefore, she sells her products; the one I liked best was Brain Dust™ . This is “an enlightening edible formula alchemized to align you with the mighty cosmic flow needed for great achievement. An adaptogenic elixir to maintain healthy systems for superior states of clarity, memory, creativity, alertness and a capacity to handle stress.” The ingredients of Brain Dust are Organic Astragalus, Shilajit, Maca, Lion’s Mane, Rhodiola, Ginkgo and Organic Stevia. Of course, such an exquisite product has to come at a price: you can purchase one jar (14 servings) of Brain Dust for US$ 30.
As I said, not all of them are daft!
Regular readers of this blog will have noticed: when homeopathy-fans run out of arguments, they tend to conduct an ‘ad hominem’ attack. They like to do this in several different ways, but one of the most popular version is to shout with indignation: YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED!!!
The aim of this claim is to brand the opponent as someone who does not know enough about homeopathy to make valid comments about it. As this sort of thing comes up regularly, it is high time to ask: WHO ACTUALLY IS AN EXPERT IN HOMEOPATHY?
This seems to be an easy question to answer, but – come to think of it – it is more complex that one first imagines. Someone could be an expert in homeopathy in more than one way; for instance, one could be an expert:
- in the history of homeopathy,
- in the manufacture of homeopathics,
- in the regulation of homeopathy,
- in the clinical use of homeopathy in human patients,
- in the clinical use of homeopathy in animals,
- in the use of homeopathy in plants (no, I am not joking!),
- in basic research of homeopathy,
- in clinical research of homeopathy.
This blog is almost entirely devoted to clinical research; therefore, we should, for the purpose of this post, narrow down the above question to: WHO IS AN EXPERT IN CLINICAL RESEARCH OF HOMEOPATHY?
I had always assumed to be such an expert – until I was accused of being a swindler and pretender, that is. I have no formal qualifications for practising homeopathy (and never claimed otherwise), and this fact has prompted many homeopathy-fans to claim that I am not qualified to comment on the value of homeopathy. Do they have a point?
Rational thinkers have often pointed out that one does not need such qualifications for practicing homeopathy. In many countries, anyone can be a homeopath, regardless of background. In all the countries I know, one certainly can practise homeopathy, if one is qualified as a doctor. Crucially, do you really need to know how to practice homeopathy for conducting a clinical trial or a systematic review of homeopathy? Homeopaths seem to think so. I fear, however, that they are wrong: you don’t need to be a surgeon, psychiatrist or rheumatologist to organise a trial or conduct a review of these subjects!
Anyway, my research of homeopathy is not valid, homeopaths say, because I lack the formal qualifications to call myself a homeopath. Let me remind them that I have:
- been trained by leading homeopaths,
- practised homeopathy for quite some time,
- headed a team of scientists conducting research into homeopathy,
- conducted several clinical trials of homeopathy,
- published several systematic reviews of homeopathy,
- no conflicts of interest in regards to homeopathy.
However, this does not impress homeopath, I am afraid. They say that my findings and conclusions about their pet therapy cannot be trusted. In their eyes, I am not a competent expert in clinical research of homeopathy. They see me as a fraud and as an impostor. They prefer the real experts of clinical research of homeopathy such as:
- Robert Mathie
- Jos Kleinjen
- Klaus Linde
These three researchers who are fully accepted by homeopaths; not just accepted, loved and admired! They all have published systematic reviews. Intriguingly, their conclusion all contradict my results in one specific aspect: THEY ARE POSITIVE.
I do not doubt their expertise for a minute, yet have always found this most amusing, even hilarious.
Why?
Because none of these experts (I know all three personally) is a qualified homeopath, none of them has any training in the practice of homeopathy, none of them has ever practised homeopathy on human patients, none of them has even worked for any length of time as a clinician.
What can we conclude from these insights?
We could, of course, descend to the same level as homeopaths tend to do and conclude that homeopathy-fans are biased, barmy, bonkers, stupid, silly, irrational, deluded, etc. However, I prefer to draw a different and probably more accurate conclusion: according to homeopathy-fans, an expert in clinical research of homeopathy is someone who has published articles that are favourable to their trade. Anyone who fails to do likewise is by definition not competent to issue a reliable verdict about it.
As the data suggesting that homeopathy is effective for improving health is – to put it mildly – less than convincing, a frantic search is currently on amongst homeopaths and their followers to identify a specific condition for which the evidence is stronger than for all conditions pooled into one big analysis. If they could show that it works for just one disease, they could celebrate this finding and henceforth use it for refuting doubters stating that highly diluted homeopathic remedies are pure placebos. One such condition is allergic rhinitis; there have been several trials suggesting that homeopathy might be effective for it, and therefore it is only logical that homeopathy-promoters want to summarise these data in order to silence sceptics once and for all.
A new paper ought to be seen in this vein. It is systematic review by the Mathie group with the stated aim “to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of homeopathic intervention in the treatment of seasonal or perennial allergic rhinitis (AR).”
Randomized controlled trials evaluating all forms of homeopathic treatment for AR were included in a systematic review (SR) of studies published up to and including December 2015. Two authors independently screened potential studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias. Primary outcomes included symptom improvement and total quality-of-life score. Treatment effect size was quantified as mean difference (continuous data), or by risk ratio (RR) and odds ratio (dichotomous data), with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Meta-analysis was performed after assessing heterogeneity and risk of bias.
Eleven studies were eligible for SR. All trials were placebo-controlled except one. Six trials used the treatment approach known as isopathy, but they were unsuitable for meta-analysis due to problems of heterogeneity and data extraction. The overall standard of methods and reporting was poor: 8/11 trials were assessed as “high risk of bias”; only one trial, on isopathy for seasonal AR, possessed reliable evidence. Three trials of variable quality (all using Galphimia glauca for seasonal AR) were included in the meta-analysis: nasal symptom relief at 2 and 4 weeks (RR = 1.48 [95% CI 1.24-1.77] and 1.27 [95% CI 1.10-1.46], respectively) favoured homeopathy compared with placebo; ocular symptom relief at 2 and 4 weeks also favoured homeopathy (RR = 1.55 [95% CI 1.33-1.80] and 1.37 [95% CI 1.21-1.56], respectively). The single trial with reliable evidence had a small positive treatment effect without statistical significance. A homeopathic and a conventional nasal spray produced equivalent improvements in nasal and ocular symptoms.
The authors concluded that the low or uncertain overall quality of the evidence warrants caution in drawing firm conclusions about intervention effects. Use of either Galphimia glauca or a homeopathic nasal spray may have small beneficial effects on the nasal and ocular symptoms of AR. The efficacy of isopathic treatment of AR is unclear.
Extracts of Galphimia glauca (GG) have been used traditionally in South America for the treatment of allergic conditions, with some reports suggesting effectiveness. A 1997 meta-analysis of 11 clinical trials (most of them of very poor quality) of homeopathic GG suggested this therapy to be effective in the treatment of AR. In 2011, I published a review (FACT 2011, 16 200-203) focussed exclusively on the remarkable set of RCTs of homeopathic Galphimia glauca (GG). My conclusions were as follows: three of the four currently available placebo-controlled RCTs of homeopathic GG suggest this therapy is an effective symptomatic treatment for hay fever. There are, however, important caveats. Most essentially, independent replication would be required before GG can be considered for the routine treatment of hay fever. Since then, no new studies have emerged.
I am citing this for two main reasons:
- There is nothing homeopathic about the principle of using GG for allergic conditions; according to homeopathic theory GG extracts would need to cause allergies for GG to have potential as a homeopathic allergy remedy. Arguably, the GG trials should therefore have been excluded from this meta-analysis for not following the homeopathic principal of ‘like cures like’.
- All the RCTs of GG were done by the same German research group. There is not a single independent replication of their findings!
Seen from this perspective, the conclusion by Mathie et al, that the use of either Galphimia glauca … may have small beneficial effects on the nasal and ocular symptoms of AR, seems more than a little over-optimistic.
This double-blind RCT aimed to test the efficacy of self-administered acupressure for pain and physical function in adults with knee osteoarthritis (KOA).
150 patients with symptomatic KOA participated and were randomized to
- verum acupressure,
- sham acupressure,
- or usual care.
Verum and sham, but not usual care, participants were taught to self-apply acupressure once daily, five days/week for eight weeks. Assessments were collected at baseline, 4 and 8 weeks. The numeric rating scale (NRS) for pain was administered during weekly phone calls. Outcomes included the WOMAC pain subscale (primary), the NRS and physical function measures (secondary). Linear mixed regression was conducted to test between group differences in mean changes from baseline for the outcomes at eight weeks.
Compared with usual care, both verum and sham participants experienced significant improvements in WOMAC pain, NRS pain and WOMAC function at 8 weeks. There were no significant differences between verum and sham acupressure groups in any of the outcomes.
The authors concluded that self-administered acupressure is superior to usual care in pain and physical function improvement for older people with KOA. The reason for the benefits is unclear and placebo effects may have played a role.
Another very odd conclusion!
The authors’ stated aim was to TEST THE EFFICACY OF ACUPRESSURE. To achieve this aim, they rightly compared it to a placebo (sham) intervention. This comparison did not show any differences between the two. Ergo, the only correct conclusion is that acupressure is a placebo.
I know, the authors (sort of) try to say this in their conclusions: placebo effects may have played a role. But surely, this is more than a little confusing. Placebo effects were quite evidently the sole cause of the observed outcomes. Is it ethical to confuse the public in this way, I wonder.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the use of CAM among newly diagnosed breast cancer patients was associated with delays in presentation, diagnosis or treatment of breast cancer. A multi-centre cross-sectional design was used and the time points of the individual breast cancer patients’ journey from first visit, resolution of diagnosis and treatments were evaluated in six public hospitals in Malaysia.
All newly diagnosed breast cancer patients from 1st January to 31st December 2012 were recruited. Data were collected through medical records review and patient interview by using a structured questionnaire. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) was defined as the use of any methods and products not included in conventional allopathic medicine before commencement of treatments. Presentation delay was defined as time taken from symptom discovery to first presentation of more than 3 months. The time points were categorised to diagnosis delay was defined as time taken from first presentation to diagnosis of more than 1 month and treatment delay was defined as time taken from diagnosis to initial treatment of more than 1 month. Multiple logistic regression was used for analysis.
A total number of 340 patients participated in this study. The prevalence of CAM use was 46.5% (n = 158). Malay ethnicity (OR 3.32; 95% CI: 1.85, 5.97) and not interpreting symptom as cancerous (OR 1.79; 95% CI: 1.10, 2.92) were significantly associated with CAM use. The use of CAM was associated with delays in presentation (OR 1.65; 95% CI: 1.05, 2.59), diagnosis (OR 2.42; 95% CI: 1.56, 3.77) and treatment of breast cancer (OR 1.74; 95% CI: 1.11, 2.72) on univariate analyses. However, after adjusting with other covariates, CAM use was associated with delays in presentation (OR 1.71; 95% CI: 1.05, 2.78) and diagnosis (OR 2.58; 95% CI: 1.59, 4.17) but not for treatment of breast cancer (OR 1.58; 95% CI: 0.98, 2.55).
The authors concluded that the prevalence of CAM use among the breast cancer patients is high. Women of Malay ethnicity and not interpreting symptom as cancerous were significantly associated with CAM use. The use of CAM had significantly associated with delay in presentation and resolution of diagnosis. Difficulty in obtaining all medical records may have excluded patients who experienced delays in presentation, diagnosis or treatment but every precaution and resources were utilized to obtain record. This study suggests further evaluation of access to breast cancer care is needed as poor access may promote the use of CAM. However, since public hospitals in Malaysia are heavily subsidized and readily available to the population, CAM use may impact delays in presentation and diagnosis.
We know from previous studies that
- CAM-use is associated with poor adherence to cancer treatments,
- using CAM as an alternative to conventional treatments results in shorter survival of cancer patients,
and now we also know that CAM-use is associated with delayed presentation and diagnosis of cancer. This latter effect can have consequences that are just as serious as the other two. The later cancer is diagnosed, the poorer the prognosis and the shorter the survival.
These findings indicate that all healthcare professionals should be vigilant and inform patients as well as the general public that CAM-users are exposed to considerable dangers.
Belgian researchers (if I remember correctly, I was the external examiner of the PhD of one of them) conducted a survey aimed at examining the beliefs about the cracking sounds often heard during high-velocity low-amplitude (HVLA) thrusts in individuals with and without personal experience of this technique.
The researchers included 100 individuals. Among them, 60 had no history of spinal manipulation, including 40 who were asymptomatic with or without a past history of spinal pain and 20 who had nonspecific spinal pain. The remaining 40 patients had a history of spinal manipulation; among them, 20 were asymptomatic and 20 had spinal pain. Participants attended a one-on-one interview during which they completed a questionnaire about their history of spinal manipulation and their beliefs regarding sounds heard during spinal manipulation.
Mean age was 43.5±15.4 years. The sounds were ascribed to vertebral repositioning by 49% of participants and to friction between two vertebras by 23% of participants; only 9% of participants correctly ascribed the sound to the release of gas. The sound was mistakenly considered to indicate successful spinal manipulation by 40% of participants. No differences in beliefs were found between the groups with and without a history of spinal manipulation.
The authors concluded that certain beliefs have documented adverse effects. This study showed a high prevalence of unfounded beliefs regarding spinal manipulation. These beliefs deserve greater attention from healthcare providers, particularly those who practice spinal manipulation.
So, what causes the sound often heard during spinal manipulation? This is how one chiropractor explains it: “In simple terms, the sound of cavitation means that the vertebrae are being gently and properly realigned. The sound of dissolved air bubbles in the fluid around the vertebrae releasing is what makes the pop.” And this is what another chiro states: “The actual pop is called a cavitation, and it’s the release of gas that makes the popping sound. The joints of the spine are called synovial joints (check out this simple and detailed description here) and they produce a fluid called synovial fluid. Synovial fluid lubricates the joint (for movement) and nourishes it. The byproducts formed in the production of synovial fluid are gasses – oxygen, nitrogen and CO2. When a joint is gapped, or opened up, the gas is released and you hear a distinctive popping sound. It’s very similar to the release of gas bubbles when you cork a champagne bottle, and equally pleasant in its after effects.” Finally NHS Choices tells us this: “During spinal manipulation, you may experience a popping sensation in your joints and hear a popping or cracking sound. It is thought this is caused by gas bubbles in the fluids that surround your joints – this is a normal part of spinal manipulation and other manual treatments.”
In reality the pop is much to do about nothing. If you pull hard on one of your fingers, chances are that you generate the same phenomenon and sound. As with your finger, the pop from the vertebral joints has no therapeutic value.
