Monthly Archives: February 2013
Several months ago, my co-workers and I once again re-visited the contentious issue of acupuncture’s safety. We published several articles on the topic none of which, I am afraid to say, was much appreciated by the slightly myopic world of acupuncture. The paper which created overt outrage and prompted an unprecedented amount of hate-mail was the one on deaths after acupuncture. This publication reported that around 90 fatalities associated with acupuncture had been documented in the medical literature.
The responses from acupuncturists ranged from disbelief to overt hostility. Acupuncturists the world over seemed to agree that there was something profoundly wrong with me personally and with my research; they all knew that acupuncture was entirely safe and that I was maliciously incorrect and merely out to destroy their livelihood.
So, am I alarmist or am I just doing my duty in reporting important facts? Two new articles might go some way towards answering this intriguing question.
The first is a review by Chinese acupuncturists who summarised all the adverse events published in the Chinese literature, a task which my article may have done only partially. The authors found 1038 cases of serious adverse events, including 35 fatalities. The most frequent non-fatal adverse events were syncope (468 cases), pneumothorax (307 cases), and subarachnoid hemorrhage (64 cases). To put this into context, we ought to know that the Chinese literature is hopelessly biased in favour of acupuncture. Thus the level of under-reporting can be assumed to be even larger than in English language publications.
The second new article is by a Swedish surgeon who aimed at systematically reviewing the literature specifically on vascular injuries caused by acupuncture. His literature searches found 31 such cases; the majority of these patients developed symptoms in direct connection with the acupuncture treatment. Three patients died, two from pericardial tamponade and one from an aortoduodenal fistula. There were 7 more tamponades, 8 pseudoaneurysms, two with ischemia, two with venous thrombosis, one with compartment syndrome and 7 with bleeding (5 in the central nervous system). The two patients with ischemia suffered lasting sequeleae.
The answer to the question asked above seems thus simple: the Chinese authors, the Swedish surgeon (none of whom I know personally or have collaborated with) and I are entirely correct and merely report the truth. And the truth is that acupuncture can cause severe complications through any of the following mechanisms:
1) puncturing the lungs resulting in a pneumothorax,
2) puncturing the heart causing a cardiac tamponade,
3) puncturing blood vessels causing haemorrhage,
4) injuring other vital structures in the body,
5) introducing bacteria or viruses resulting in infections.
Any of these complications can be severe and might, in dramatic cases, even lead to the death of the patient.
But we have to have the right perspective! These are extremely rare events! Most other treatments used in medicine are much much more risky! To keep banging on about such exotic events is not helpful! I can hear the acupuncture world shout in unison.
True, these are almost certainly rare events – but we have no good idea how rare they are. There is no adverse event reporting scheme in acupuncture, and the published cases are surely only the tip of the ice-berg. True, most other medical treatments carry much greater risks! And true, we need to have the right perspective in all of this!
So let’s put this in a reasonable perspective: with most other treatments, we know how effective they are. We can thus estimate whether the risks outweigh the benefit, and if we find that they do, we should (and usually do) stop using them. I am not at all sure that we can perform similar assessments in the case of acupuncture.
Clinical trials of acupuncture can be quite challenging. In particular, it is often difficult to make sure that any observed outcome is truly due to the treatment and not caused by some other factor(s). How tricky this can be, shows a recently published study.
A new RCT has all (well, almost all) the features of a rigorous study. It tested the effects of acupuncture in patients suffering from hay fever. The German investigators recruited 46 specialized physicians in 6 hospital clinics and 32 private outpatient clinics. In total, 422 patients with IgE sensitization to birch and grass pollen were randomized into three groups: 1) acupuncture plus rescue medication (RM) (n= 212), 2) sham acupuncture plus RM (n= 102), or 3) RM alone (n= 108). Twelve acupuncture sessions were provided in groups 1 and 2 over 8 weeks. The outcome measures included changes in the Rhinitis Quality of Life Questionnaire (RQLQ) overall score and the RM score (RMs) from baseline to weeks 7, 8 and 16 in the first year as well as week 8 in the second year after randomization.
Compared with sham acupuncture and with RM, acupuncture was associated with improvement in RQLQ score and RMS. There were no differences after 16 weeks in the first year. After the 8-week follow-up phase in the second year, small improvements favoring real acupuncture over sham were noted.
Based on these results, the authors concluded that “acupuncture led to statistically significant improvements in disease-specific quality of life and antihistamine use measures after 8 weeks of treatment compared with sham acupuncture and with RM alone, but the improvements may not be clinically significant.”
The popular media were full of claims that this study proves the efficacy of acupuncture. However, I am not at all convinced that this conclusion is not hopelessly over-optimistic.
It might not have been the acupuncture itself that led to the observed improvements; they could well have been caused by several factors unrelated to the treatment itself. To understand my concern, we need to look closer at the actual interventions employed by the investigators.
The real acupuncture was done on acupuncture points thought to be indicated for hay fever. The needling was performed as one would normally do it, and the acupuncturists were asked to treat the patients in group 1 in such a way that they were likely to experience the famous ‘de-qi’ feeling.
The sham acupuncture, by contrast, was performed on non-acupuncture points; acupuncturists were asked to use shallow needling only and they were instructed to try not to produce ‘de-qi’.
This means that the following factors in combination or alone could have caused [and in my view probably did cause] the observed differences in outcomes between the acupuncture and the sham group:
1) verbal or non-verbal communication between the acupuncturists and the patient [previous trials have shown this factor to be of crucial importance]
2) the visibly less deep needling in the sham-group
3) the lack of ‘de-qi’ experience in the sham-group.
Sham-treatments in clinical trials serve the purpose of a placebo. They are thus meant to be indistinguishable from the verum. If that is not the case [as in the present study], the trial cannot be accepted as being patient-blind. If a trial is not patient-blind, the expectations of patients will most certainly influence the results.
Therefore I believe that the marginal differences noted in this study were not due to the effects of acupuncture per se, but were an artifact caused through de-blinding of the patients. De facto, neither the patients nor the acupuncturists were blinded in this study.
If that is true, the effects were not just not clinically relevant, as noted by the authors, they also had nothing to do with acupuncture. In other words, acupuncture is not of proven efficacy for this condition – a verdict which is also supported by our systematic review of the subject which concluded that “the evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture for the symptomatic treatment or prevention of allergic rhinitis is mixed. The results for seasonal allergic rhinitis failed to show specific effects of acupuncture…”
Once again, we have before us a study which looks impressive at first glance. At closer scrutiny, we find, however, that it had important design flaws which led to false positive results and conclusions. In my view, it would have been the responsibility of the authors to discuss these limitations in full detail and to draw conclusions that take them into account. Moreover, it would have been the duty of the peer-reviewers and journal editors to pick up on these points. Instead the editors even commissioned an accompanying editorial which displays an exemplary lack of critical thinking.
Having failed to do any of this, they are in my opinion all guilty of misleading the world media who reported extensively and often uncritically on this new study thus misleading us all. Sadly, the losers in this bonanza of incompetence are the many hay fever sufferers who will now be trying (and paying for) useless treatments.
Still in the spirit of ACUPUNCTURE AWARENESS WEEK, I have another critical look at a recent paper. If you trust some of the conclusions of this new article, you might think that acupuncture is an evidence-based treatment for coronary heart disease. I think this would be a recipe for disaster.
This condition affects millions and eventually kills a frighteningly large percentage of the population. Essentially, it is caused by the fact that, as we get older, the blood vessels supplying the heart also change, become narrower and get partially or even totally blocked. This causes lack of oxygen in the heart which causes pain known as angina pectoris. Angina is a most important warning sign indicating that a full blown heart attack might be not far.
The treatment of coronary heart disease consists in trying to let more blood flow through the narrowed coronaries, either by drugs or by surgery. At the same time, one attempts to reduce the oxygen demand of the heart, if possible. Normalisation of risk factors like hypertension and hypercholesterolaemia are key preventative strategies. It is not immediate clear to me how acupuncture might help in all this – but I have been wrong before!
The new meta-analysis included 16 individual randomised clinical trials. All had a high or moderate risk of bias. Acupuncture combined with conventional drugs (AC+CD) turned out to be superior to conventional drugs alone in reducing the incidence of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). AC+CD was superior to conventional drugs in reducing angina symptoms as well as in improving electrocardiography (ECG). Acupuncture by itself was also superior to conventional drugs for angina symptoms and ECG improvement. AC+CD was superior to conventional drugs in shortening the time to onset of angina relief. However, the time to onset was significantly longer for acupuncture treatment than for conventional treatment alone.
From these results, the authors [who are from the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Sichuan, China] conclude that “AC+CD reduced the occurrence of AMI, and both acupuncture and AC+CD relieved angina symptoms and improved ECG. However, compared with conventional treatment, acupuncture showed a longer delay before its onset of action. This indicates that acupuncture is not suitable for emergency treatment of heart attack. Owing to the poor quality of the current evidence, the findings of this systematic review need to be verified by more RCTs to enhance statistical power.”
As in the meta-analysis discussed in my previous post, the studies are mostly Chinese, flawed, and not obtainable for an independent assessment. As in the previous article, I fail to see a plausible mechanism by which acupuncture might bring about the effects. This is not just a trivial or coincidental observation – I could cite dozens of systematic reviews for which the same criticism applies.
What is different, however, from the last post on gout is simple and important: if you treat gout with a therapy that is ineffective, you have more pain and eventually might opt for an effective one. If you treat coronary heart disease with a therapy that does not work, you might not have time to change, you might be dead.
Therefore I strongly disagree with the authors of this meta-analysis; “the findings of this systematic review need NOT to be verified by more RCTs to enhance statistical power” — foremost, I think, the findings need to be interpreted with much more caution and re-written. In fact, the findings show quite clearly that there is no good evidence to use acupuncture for coronary heart disease. To pretend otherwise is, in my view, not responsible.
There might be an important lesson here: A SEEMINGLY SLIGHT CORRECTION OF CONCLUSIONS OF SUCH SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS MIGHT SAVE LIVES.
This week is acupuncture awareness week, and I will use this occasion to continue focusing on this therapy. This first time ever event is supported by the British Acupuncture Council who state that it aims to “help better inform people about the ancient practice of traditional acupuncture. With 2.3 million acupuncture treatments carried out each year, acupuncture is one of the most popular complementary therapies practised in the UK today.“
Right, let’s inform people about acupuncture then! Let’s show them that there is often more to acupuncture research than meets the eye.
My team and I have done lots of research into acupuncture and probably published more papers on this than any other subject. We had prominent acupuncturists on board from the UK, Korea, China and Japan, we ran conferences, published books and are proud to have been innovative and productive in our multidisciplinary research. But here I do not intend to dwell on our own achievements, rather I will highlight several important new papers in this area.
Korean authors just published a meta-analysis to assess the effectiveness of acupuncture as therapy for gouty arthritis. Ten RCTs involving 852 gouty arthritis patients were included. Six studies of 512 patients reported a significant decrease in uric acid in the treatment group compared with a control group, while two studies of 120 patients reported no such effect. The remaining four studies of 380 patients reported a significant decrease in pain in the treatment group.
The authors conclude “that acupuncture is efficacious as complementary therapy for gouty arthritis patients”.
We should be delighted with such a positive and neat result! Why then do I hesitate and have doubts?
I believe that this paper reveals several important issues in relation to systematic reviews of Chinese acupuncture trials and studies of other TCM interventions. In fact, this is my main reason for discussing the new meta-analysis here. The following three points are crucial, in my view:
1) All the primary studies were from China, and 8 of the 10 were only available in Chinese.
2) All of them had major methodological flaws.
3) It has been shown repeatedly that all acupuncture-trials from China are positive.
Given this situation, the conclusions of any review for which there are only Chinese acupuncture studies might as well be written before the actual research has started. If the authors are pro-acupuncture, as the ones of the present article clearly are, they will conclude that “acupuncture is efficacious“. If the research team has some critical thinkers on board, the same evidence will lead to an entirely different conclusion, such as “due to the lack of rigorous trials, the evidence is less than compelling.“
Systematic reviews are supposed to be the best type of evidence we currently have; they are supposed to guide therapeutic decisions. I find it unacceptable that one and the same set of data could be systematically analysed to generate such dramatically different outcomes. This is confusing and counter-productive!
So what is there to do? How can we prevent being misled by such articles? I think that medical journals should refuse to publish systematic reviews which so clearly lack sufficient critical input. I also believe that reviewers of predominantly Chinese studies should provide English translations of these texts so that they can be independently assessed by those who are not able to read Chinese – and for the sake of transparency, journal editors should insist on this point.
And what about the value of acupuncture for gouty arthritis? I think I let the readers draw their own conclusion.
Everyone knows, I think, that smoking is bad for our health. Why then do so many of us still smoke? Because smoking is addictive – and addictions are, by definition, far from easy to get rid of. Many smokers try acupuncture, and acupuncturists are making a ‘pretty penny’ on the assumption that their treatment is an effective way to stop the habit. But what does the best evidence tell us?
A new randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial with 125 smokers was conducted to determine whether ear acupuncture with electrical stimulation (auriculotherapy) once a week for 5 consecutive weeks is more effective than sham treatment.
The results showed that there was no difference in the rate of smoking cessation between the two groups. After 6 weeks, the auriculotherapy group achieved a rate of 20.9% abstinence which was not significantly different from the 17.9% in the sham group.
The authors of this study concluded that “the results … do not support the use of auriculotherapy to assist with smoking cessation. It is possible that a longer treatment duration, more frequent sessions, or other modifications of the intervention protocol used in this study may result in a different outcome. However, based on the results of this study, there is no evidence that auriculotherapy is superior to placebo when offered once a week for 5 weeks, as described in previous uncontrolled studies.”
Of course, they are correct to state that, theoretically, a different treatment regimen might have generated different outcomes. But how likely is that in reality?
To answer this question, we might consult the Cochrane review on the subject (which incidentally is close to my heart: I initiated it many years ago and was its senior author until it was plagiarised by my former co-worker and my name was replaced by that of his new boss [never a dull day in alternative medicine research!]).
The latest version of this article concludes that “there is no consistent, bias-free evidence that acupuncture, acupressure, laser therapy or electrostimulation are effective for smoking cessation, but lack of evidence and methodological problems mean that no firm conclusions can be drawn. Further, well designed research into acupuncture, acupressure and laser stimulation is justified since these are popular interventions and safe when correctly applied, though these interventions alone are likely to be less effective than evidence-based interventions”
This is a very, very (yes, I meant very, very) odd conclusion, I think. If I had still been an author of this plagiarised paper, I would have suggested something a little more straightforward: 33 studies of various types of acupuncture for smoking cessation are currently available (if we include the new trial, the number is 34). The totality of this evidence fails to show that acupuncture is effective. Therefore acupuncture should NOT be considered a valid option for this indication.
“They would say that, wouldn’t they?” is the quote attributed to Mandy Rice-Davies giving witness in the Profumo affair. I think, it aptly highlights some of the issues related to conflicts of interest in health care.
These days, when a researcher publishes a paper, he will in all likelihood have to disclose all conflicts of interest he might have. The aim of this exercise is to be as transparent as possible; if someone has received support from a commercial company, for example, this fact does not necessarily follow that his paper is biased, but it is important to lay open the fact so that the readers can make up their own minds.
The questionnaires that authors have to complete prior to publication of their article focus almost exclusively on financial issues. For instance, one has to disclose any sponsorship, fees, travel support or shares that one might own in a company. In conventional medicine, these matters are deemed to be the most important sources for potential conflicts of interest.
In alternative medicine, financial issues are generally thought to be far less critical; it is generally seen as an area where there is so little money that it is hardly worth bothering. Perhaps this is the reason why few journals in this field insist on declarations of conflicts of interests and few authors disclose them.
After having been a full-time researcher of alternative medicine for two decades, I have become convinced that conflicts of interest are at least as prevalent and powerful in this field as in any other area of health care. Sure, there is less money at stake, but this fact is more than compensated by non-financial issues. Quasi-evangelic convictions abound in alternative medicine and it is, I think, obvious that they can amount to significant conflicts of interest.
During their training, alternative practitioners are being taught many things which are unproven, have no basis in fact or are just plainly wrong. Eventually this schooling can create a belief system which often is adhered to regardless of the scientific evidence and which tends to be defended at all cost. As some of my readers are bound to object to this remark, I better cite an example: during their training, students of chiropractic develop a more and more firm stance against immunization which in all likelihood is due to the type of information they receive at the chiropractic college. There is no question in my mind that creeds can represent an even more powerful conflict of interest than financial matters.
Moreover, this belief is indivisibly intertwined with existential issues. In alternative medicine, there may not be huge amounts of money at stake but practitioners’ livelihoods are perceived to be at risk. If an acupuncturist, for instance, argues in favour of his therapy, he also consciously or sub-consciously is trying to protect his income.
Some might say that this not different from conventional medicine, but I disagree: if we take away one specific therapy from a doctor because it turns out to be useless or unsafe, he will be able to use another one; if we take the acupuncture needle away from an acupuncturist, we have deprived him of his livelihood.
This is why conflicts of interest in alternative medicine tend to be very acute, powerful and personal. And this is why enthusiasts of alternative medicine are incapable or unwilling to look upon any type of critical assessment of their area as anything else than an attack on their income, their beliefs, their status, their training or their person. If anyone should doubt it, I recommend studying the comments I received to previous posts of this blog.
When Mandi Rice-Davies gave evidence during the trial of Stephen Ward, the osteopath who had introduced her to influential clients, the prosecuting council noted that Lord Astor denied having had an affair with her. Mrs Rice-Davies allegedly replied “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” (Actually, she did not say these exact words but something rather similar) When I read the comments following my posts on this blog, I am often reminded of this now classical quote.
When chiropractors deny that neck manipulations carry a risk, when herbalists insist that traditional herbalism is based on good evidence, when homeopaths claim that their remedies are more than placebos, I believe we should ask who, in these debates, might have a conflict of interest.
Is there a circumstance of one party in the discussion where personal interests might benefit from the argument? Who is more likely to be objective, the person whose livelihood is endangered or the independent expert who studied the subject in depth but has no axe to grind? If you ask these questions, you might conclude as I frequently do: “they would say that, wouldn’t they?”
In 2010, I have reviewed the deaths which have been reported after chiropractic treatments. My article suggested that 26 fatalities had been published in the medical literature and many more might have remained unpublished. The alleged pathology usually was a vascular accident involving the dissection of a vertebral artery. Whenever I write about the risks of spinal manipulation, chiropractors say that I am irresponsible and alarmist. Yet I believe I am merely doing my duty in alerting health care professionals and the public to the possibility that this intervention is associated with harm and that caution is therefore recommended.
Fortunately, I am not alone, as a new report from China shows.This review summarised published cases of injuries associated with cervical manipulation in China, and to describe the risks and benefits of the therapy.
A total of 156 cases met the inclusion criteria. They included the following problems: syncope = 45 cases , mild spinal cord injury or compression = 34 cases, nerve root injury = 24 cases, ineffective treatment or symptom increased = 11 cases ; cervical spine fracture = 11 cases, dislocation or semiluxation = 6 cases, soft tissue injury = 3 cases, serious accident = 22 cases including paralysis, death and cerebrovascular accident. Manipulation including rotation was involved in 42.00%, 63 cases). 5 patients died.
The authors conclude that “it is imperative for practitioners to complete the patients’ management and assessment before manipulation. That the practitioners conduct a detailed physical examination and make a correct diagnosis would be a pivot method of avoiding accidents. Excluding contraindications and potential risks, standardizing evaluation criteria and practitioners’ qualification, increasing safety awareness and risk assessment and strengthening the monitoring of the accidents could decrease the incidence of accidents” (I do apologize for the authors’ poor English).
It is probable that someone will now calculate that the risk of harm is minute. Chinese traditional healers seem to use spinal manipulation fairly regularly, so the incidence of complications would be one in several millions.
Such calculations are frequently made by chiropractors in an attempt to define the incidence rates of risks associated with chiropractic in the West. They look convincing but, in fact, they are complete nonsense.
The reason is that under-reporting can be huge. Clinical trials of chiropractic often omit any mention of adverse effects (thus violating publication ethics) and, in our case-series, under-reporting was precisely 100% (none of the cases we discovered had been recorded anywhere). This means that these estimates are entirely worthless.
I sincerely hope that the risk turns out to be extremely low – but without a functioning reporting system for such events, we might as well read tea-leaves.
Since weeks I have been searching for new (2013) studies which actually report POSITIVE results. I like good news as much as the next man but, in my line of business, it seems awfully hard to come by. Therefore I am all the more delighted to present these two new articles to my readers.
The first study is a randomized trial with patients suffering from metastatic cancer who received one of three interventions: massage therapy, no-touch intervention or usual care. Primary outcomes were pain, anxiety, and alertness; secondary outcomes were quality of life and sleep. The mean number of massage therapy sessions per patient was 2.8.
The results show significant improvement in the quality of life of the patients who received massage therapy after 1-week follow-up which was not observed in either of the other groups. Unfortunately, the difference was not sustained at 1 month. There were also trends towards improvement in pain and sleep of the patients after massage. No serious adverse events were noted.
The authors conclude that “providing therapeutic massage improves the quality of life at the end of life for patients and may be associated with further beneficial effects, such as improvement in pain and sleep quality. Larger randomized controlled trials are needed to substantiate these findings“.
The second study examined the effectiveness of a back massage for improving sleep quality in 60 postpartum women suffering from poor sleep. They were randomized to either the intervention or the control group. Participants in both groups received the same care except for the back massages. The intervention group received one 20-minutes back massage at the same time each evening for 5 consecutive days by a certified massage therapist. The outcome measure was the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The results showed that the changes in mean PSQI were significantly lower in the intervention group than in controls indicating a positive effect of massage on sleep quality.
The authors’ conclusions were clear: “an intervention involving back massage in the postnatal period significantly improved the quality of sleep.”
Where I was trained (Germany), massage is not deemed to be an alternative but an entirely mainstream treatment. Despite this fact, there is precious little evidence to demonstrate that it is effective. Our own research has found encouraging evidence for a range of conditions, including autism, cancer palliation, constipation, DOMS and back pain. In addition, we have shown that massage is not entirely free of risks but that its potential for harm is very low (some might say that this was never in question but it is good to have a bit more solid evidence).
The new studies are, of course, not without flaws; this can hardly be expected in an area where logistical, financial and methodological problems abound. The fact that there are many different approaches to massage does not make things easier either. The new evidence is nevertheless encouraging and seems to suggest that massage has relaxing effects which are clinically relevant. In my view, massage is a therapy worth considering for more rigorous research.
The UK General Chiropractic Council has commissioned a survey of chiropractic patients’ views of chiropractic. Initially, 600 chiropractors were approached to recruit patients, but only 47 volunteered to participate. Eventually, 70 chiropractors consented and recruited a total of 544 patients who completed the questionnaire in 2012. The final report of this exercise has just become available.
I have to admit, I found it intensely boring. This is mainly because the questions asked avoided contentious issues. One has to dig deep to find nuggets of interest. Here are some of the findings that I thought were perhaps mildly intriguing:
15% of all patients did not receive information about possible adverse effects (AEs) of their treatment.
20% received no explanations why investigations such as X-rays were necessary and what risks they carried.
17% were not told how much their treatment would cost during the initial consultation.
38% were not informed about complaint procedures.
9% were not told about further treatment options for their condition.
18% said they were not referred to another health care professional when the condition failed to improve.
20% noted that the chiropractor did not liaise with the patient’s GP.
I think, one has to take such surveys with more than just a pinch of salt. At best, they give a vague impression of what patients believe. At worst, they are not worth the paper they are printed on.
Perhaps the most remarkable finding from the report is the unwillingness of chiropractors to co-operate with the GCC which, after all, is their regulating body. To recruit only ~10% of all UK chiropractors is more than disappointing. This low response rate will inevitably impact on the validity of the results and the conclusions.
It can be assumed that those practitioners who did volunteer are a self-selected sample and thus not representative of the UK chiropractic profession; they might be especially good, correct or obedient. This, in turn, also applies to the sample of patients recruited for this research. If that is so, the picture that emerged from the survey is likely to be be far too positive.
In any case, with a response rate of only ~10%, any survey is next to useless. I would therefore put it in the category of ‘not worth the paper it is printed on’.
As mentioned several times on this blog, homeopathy lacks a solid evidence base (to put it mildly). There are powerful organisations which attempt to mislead the public about this fact, but most homeopathy-fans know this only too well, in my opinion. Some try to bypass this vexing fact by trying to convince us that homeopathy is value for money, never mind the hard science of experimental proof of its principles or the complexity of the clinical data. They might feel that politicans would take notice, if homeopathy would be appreciated as a cheap form of health care. In this context, it is worth mentioning that researchers from Sheffield have just published a systematic review of economic evaluations of homeopathy
They included 14 published assessments in their review. Eight studies found cost savings associated with the use of homeopathy. Four investigations suggested that improvements in homeopathy patients were at least as good as in control group patients, at comparable costs. Two studies found improvements similar to conventional treatment, but at higher costs. The researchers also noted that studies were highly heterogeneous and had numerous methodological weaknesses.
The authors concluded that “although the identified evidence of the costs and potential benefits of homeopathy seemed promising, studies were highly heterogeneous and had several methodological weaknesses. It is therefore not possible to draw firm conclusions based on existing economic evaluations of homeopathy“.
Thre are, of course, several types of economic evaluations of medical interventions; the most basic of these simply compares the cost of one medication with those of another. In such an analysis, homeopathy would normally win against conventional tratment, as homeopathic remedies are generally inexpensive. If one adds the treatment time into the equation, things become a little more complex; homeopathic consultations tend to be considerably longer that conventional ones, and if the homeopaths’ time is costed at the same rate as the time of conventional doctors, it is uncertain whether homeopathy would still be cheaper.
Much more relevant, in my view, are cost-effective analyses which compare the relative costs and outcomes of two or more treatments. The results of such evaluations are often expressed in terms of a ratio where the denominator is a gain in health from a treatment and the numerator is the cost associated with the health gain. The most common measure used to express this is the QUALY.
Any cost-effective analysis can only produce meaningfully positive results, if the treatment in question supported by sound evidence for effectivenes. A treatment that is not demonstrably effective cannot be cost-effective! And this is where the principal problem with any cost-effectiveness analysis of homeopathy lies. Homeopathic remedies are placebos and thus can be neither effective nor cost-effective. Arguments to the contrary are in my view fallacious.
The authors of the new article say they have identified evidence of the potential benefits of homeopathy. How can this be? They based this conclusion only on the 14 studies included in their review. But this is only about 5% of the total available data. Reliable estimates of effectiveness should be based on the totality of the available evidence and not on a selection thereof.
I therefore think it is wise to focus on the part of the authors’ conclusion that does make sense: ” It is… not possible to draw firm conclusions based on existing economic evaluations of homeopathy“. In plain English: economic evaluations of homeopathy fail to show that it is value for money.
