Acupuncture for Chronic Shoulder Pain in Persons With Spinal Cord Injury: A Small-Scale Clinical Trial

Abstract 

Dyson-Hudson TA, Kadar P, LaFountaine M, Emmons R, Kirshblum SC, Tulsky D, Komaroff E. Acupuncture for chronic shoulder pain in persons with spinal cord injury: a small-scale clinical trial.

Objective

To determine the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic musculoskeletal shoulder pain in subjects with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Design

Randomized, double blind (participants, evaluator), placebo (invasive sham) controlled trial.

Setting

Clinical research center.

Participants

Seventeen manual wheelchair-using subjects with chronic SCI and chronic musculoskeletal shoulder pain.

Interventions

Participants were randomly assigned to receive 10 treatments of either acupuncture or invasive sham acupuncture (light needling of nonacupuncture points).

Main Outcome Measure

Changes in shoulder pain intensity were measured using the Wheelchair User’s Shoulder Pain Index.

Results

Shoulder pain decreased significantly over time in both the acupuncture and the sham acupuncture groups (P=.005), with decreases of 66% and 43%, respectively. There was no significant difference between the 2 groups (P=.364). There was, however, a medium effect size associated with the acupuncture treatment.

Conclusions

There appears to be an analgesic effect or a powerful placebo effect associated with both acupuncture and sham acupuncture. There was a medium treatment effect associated with the acupuncture, which suggests that it may be superior to sham acupuncture. This observation, along with the limited power, indicates that a larger, more definitive randomized controlled trial using a similar design is warranted.

Key Words: Acupuncture therapy, Rehabilitation, Shoulder pain, Spinal cord injuries