Abstracts des SAR Symposion in Minneapolis

Vom 19. – 20. Oktober 2001 fand im Pillsbury Auditorium, Hennepin County Medical Center, Minnesota das 8. jährliche Symposion der Society of Acupuncture Research statt. 
Das Kongressprogramm war wie 2000 bei dem Symposion in Baltimore hervorragend und fokussierte auf den aktuellen Stand der wissenschaftlichen Forschung zur Akupunktur.
Auch der aktuelle Stand der von den National Institutes of Health geförderten, klinischen Studien wurden in Vorträgen vorgestellt und diskutiert. Wie bereits in den letzten Monaten stellen wir an dieser Stelle die Abstracts des Symposiums als Serie hier ins Netz.
Hier den 7. Teil:

Richard Hammerschlag
Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, Portland, OR

An International Conference on Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine Research was held May 17-19, 2001 in San Francisco. Included in the program were 23 oral presentations and 188 posters. Abstracts for both types of presentations were distributed to conference attendees as part of an issue of Altern Ther Health Med 7(3):102-112 (oral); S1-S40 (posters), 2001. However, since the abstracts were arranged by alphabetical order of first author, with no subject index, selection of posters of interest could be made only by reading through every title. The present talk is the result of a hand-search of the abstracts with the aim of cataloging those relating to acupuncture and Oriental medicine. The project was undertaken to provide the AOM community with an overview of the breadth of research recently completed and currently underway in this field. Individuals and institutions either beginning or expanding research programs may benefit by examining which areas and types of research are receiving attention, i.e. funding. From over 300 submitted abstracts, the program committee selected 23 for oral presentation, 10 of which (43.5%) involve either acupuncture (6) or Chinese herbs (4). The primary focus of the presentations is research methodology (2), clinical trials (1), basic science (4), and surveys (3). A further 188 of the submitted abstracts were accepted for poster presentations, 52 of which (27.7%) involve AOM. Topics of these posters include acupuncture (37), acupressure (2), Chinese herbs (9), Qigong (4) and Traditional Chinese Medicine (3); (3 posters were relevant to two categories.) Posters focus on Research methodology (9), qualitative research (2), outcomes research (2), controlled clinical trials (13), basic science (13), surveys (11) and reviews (3); (1 poster was relevant to two categories). Details of the individual research projects, according to AOM area and type of research will be discussed and included in a handout.

Karen Sherman¹, Richard Hammerschlag^2
1Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative, Seattle WA
²Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, Portland OR

In a novel approach to consensus building on key issues in acupuncture research methodology, thirteen acupuncture researchers from around the world were invited to a three-day workshop in Exeter this past July. The workshop was organized by the Stichting (Foundation) for the Study of Traditional East Asian Medicine (Amsterdam) and the Acupuncture Research Resource Center (Exeter). Arriving from Australia, Canada, England, Holland, Italy, Japan and the United States, the researchers met to present papers and find common ground on five pre-selected topics (listed below). The first two days were devoted to topic-based plenary and breakout sessions. On the third morning consensus summaries were prepared for presentation to a public audience later that afternoon. This talk will present an overview of the positions arrived at for each of the five topic areas. The full summary papers are being prepared for publication in a single issue of Clinical Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine that will be widely distributed to the acupuncture research community as a means of stimulating further discussion. Individual papers on each topic will appear in subsequent issues of the same journal.

The five topics, with representative consensus statements for each, are:

1. Matching research design to research question in clinical trials of acupuncture

• Proper attention to design issues can be achieved by customizing a recommended and generically worded question.
• Resources can be utilized most effectively by employing a phased sequence of increasingly sophisticated studies.

2. Designing clinical research to evaluate traditional East Asian systems of medicine

• Acupuncture research should respect the integrity of clinical practice.
• Pragmatic trial designs are well-suited to study systems of medicine.

3. Identifying and controlling the non-specific effects of acupuncture

• The "placebo effect" is multi-factorial; control needling is better described as "non-invasive sham" or "invasive sham" rather than as placebo.
• Practitioner intention and patient attitude should be recognized as non-specific effects but are difficult to control for.

4. Assessing strengths and weaknesses of systematic reviews of acupuncture

• The wide diversity of acupuncture styles may confound the procedures and conclusions of Systematic Reviews.
• Criteria developed for evaluating quality of biomedical trials may be too limited to apply to acupuncture trials.

5. Identifying research questions relevant to the acupuncture community

• Different styles of AOM should be compared for treating different conditions.
• Characteristics of patients as well as practitioners with "best" outcomes need to be identified.