• Overview
  • Ethnicity and Culture
  • Models of Pain Management
  • Evaluating Literature
  • Professional Training, Licensure & Credentials
• Interventions
  • Common Approaches
  • Theories of Mechanism
  • Safety and Adverse Effects
• Conditions
  • Selected Conditions
  • Text Resources
  • Web Resources

Evaluating the Literature

General Issues in Evaluating CAM Research:

1. Observe the usual concerns about having  adequate sample sizes, using valid statistical techniques, appropriate control groups, etc.
2. It’s preferable to use standardized and previously validated assessment measures, rather than ones that have been designed just for the study in question.
3. Ensure the presence of appropriate (though often difficult to arrange) sham therapies for the control group when testing Therapeutic Touch, acupuncture, hypnosis and other CAM therapies.
4. Take into account non-specific treatment factors such as expectation and clinician contact time.

See also: Challenges to Using an Evidence-based Approach to Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Specific Issues in Evaluating CAM Pain Research

1. Be wary of studies that focus only on levels of pain, rather than improvement in functional activity levels.
2. Distinguish acute from chronic pain.
3. Distinguish pain by etiologic diagnosis, not by location.
4. Minimize or control for psychiatric co-morbidities, especially major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
5. Control for concurrent use of pain and psychiatric medications.

[26,27,28,29]