National Institutes of Health • National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Chronic Pain and CAM

September 2010

Despite the widespread use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies for chronic pain, scientific evidence on efficacy and mechanisms—whether the therapies help the conditions for which they are used and, if so, how—is, for the most part, limited. However, the evidence base is growing, especially for therapies that many people use for common kinds of pain. This issue highlights the research status for several therapies used for common kinds of pain, including low-back pain, arthritis, headache, neck pain, and more.

Clinical Guidelines

Chronic Pain Management (Anesthesiology) [699KB PDF]
Pain Management Task Force Final Report (Office of The Army Surgeon General) [5MB PDF]
Acupuncture for Chronic Low-Back Pain (New England Journal of Medicine)
Diagnosis and Treatment of Low-Back Pain (Annals of Internal Medicine) [494KB PDF]
Migraine Headaches in Children and Adolescents (Journal of Pediatric Health Care)
Osteoarthritis of the Hip and Knee (Osteoarthritis Cartilage) [1.5MB PDF]
Osteoarthritis of the Knee (The Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons) [1.39MB PDF]

Scientific Literature

Systematic Reviews/Reviews/Meta-analysis (PubMed®)
Randomized Controlled Trials (PubMed®)

Information for Your Patients

* Note: PDF files require a viewer such as the free Adobe Reader.

NCCAM Clinical Digest is a service of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, NIH, DHHS. NCCAM Clinical Digest, a monthly e-newsletter, offers evidence-based information on CAM, including scientific literature searches, summaries of NCCAM-funded research, fact sheets for patients, and more.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science, training CAM researchers, and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals. For additional information, call NCCAM’s Clearinghouse toll-free at 1-888-644-6226, or visit the NCCAM Web site at nccam.nih.gov. NCCAM is 1 of 27 institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health, the Federal focal point for medical research in the United States.

Subscriptions

Copyright

Content is in the public domain and may be reprinted, except if marked as copyrighted (©). Please credit the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine as the source. All copyrighted material is the property of its respective owners and may not be reprinted without their permission.

Follow NCCAM on:

Twitter at twitter.com/NCCAM