Acupuncture - No sham

摘要

For patients with Bell palsy treated with pred- nisone, the addition of strong-stimulation acupunc-JL ture, which can elicit a higher intensity of de qi, significantly improved the therapeutic effect." So write Xu and colleagues in their paper describing a randomized controlled trial of acupuncture. Readers could be forgiven for overlooking this trial because we have seen a steady flow of acupuncture trials in this and other journals, many showing some benefit compared with placebo, sham acupuncture or usual practice. However, this trial is different for 3 reasons: everyone received real acupuncture, but with varied technique; the primary outcome was objective physical recovery; and the outcome assessment was completely blinded.