Acupuncture in musculoskeletal disorders - is there a point?

Several surveys have identified that Australian general practitioners have largely accepted acupuncture as part of their armamentarium. About a quarter of GPs have been trained in acupuncture and the majority of those surveyed agreed that acupuncture was effective and that they had referred patients for the therapy. Acupuncture is an integral part of traditional Chinese medicine and has thousands of years of history of use. While acupuncture presents some challenges to test in randomised controlled trials, such as inadequate placebos and difficulty achieving blinding of both researchers and participants, many trials of increasingly high standard have been published; for example, the Cochrane Collaboration has over 120 reviews and protocols relating to acupuncture. This article presents some recent evidence about the use of acupuncture to treat musculoskeletal conditions.