Acupuncture and Orthopedics
Shortly after qualifying as an Orthopedic Surgeon, back in 2002, I found myself working in primary care. The Orthopedic Surgeon, as a primary care physician, deals with all accidents in the workplace, ideally working to prevent accidents and other occupational hazards, all occupational diseases of the musculoskeletal system, especially back pain and even more so “back pain”, i.e the modern epidemic of sick leaves.
Among other musculoskeletal diseases, osteoporosis has a special place. Orthopedic Surgeons, Rheumatologists, Endocrinologists and Physiatrists are considered relevant medical specialties. As the colleagues in the other three specialties are considerably fewer, the burden of dealing with the “silent epidemic” falls mainly upon the shoulders of Orthopedic Surgeons, since they possess the unique privilege of monitoring the patient with osteoporosis “before, during and after the fracture”.
During my residency in KAT Hospital, Kifissia, training in the field of Osteoporosis was rather scarce. Therefore, I had to follow up closely with most events, seminars and congresses, of the Hellenic Osteoporosis Foundation, as well as of the Hellenic Society for the Study of Bone Metabolism. As soon as a Masters’ Degree – MSc on the field of Bone Metabolic Disorders- BMD at Athens University Medical School became available, I decided to enroll, despite already having a PhD from the same University.
By happy coincidence (maybe even an omen), I had just met again with my fellow student at Athens University Medical School, Konstantina Theodoratou, founder of the Scientific Association of Medical Acupuncture in Greece – SAMAG. https://samag.gr/ . Having recently returned from China and totally dedicated to spreading acupuncture, she decided to start a new educational program for acupuncture in Greece, under the auspices of the International Council of Medical Acupuncture and Related Techniques – ICMART. https://icmart.org/
Being a student again, I was lucky enough to be a classmate with the distinguished Plastic Surgeon Michael Tarabe and we became close friends. Although both surgeons, our views on acupuncture are very remotely related. However, acupuncture is so broad that there is room for so many different views and perspectives. After graduating from the 300 hours-educational units training program, I returned to finishing my thesis in order to graduate from the MSc on BMD, essentially the fuse for my involvement with acupuncture.
Several years and countless study hours later, the real question is no longer whether acupuncture really works, at least for musculoskeletal conditions, but how is it possible to practice Orthopedics without acupuncture knowledge. Obviously, acupuncture has no direct application in trauma or the purely surgical side of the specialty. However, it has countless indications in most diseases of the musculoskeletal system either as a temporary or even permanent treatment of the condition or simply as pain management, which is the main concern of most patients.
After all, the required “experience and special training in acupuncture”, that the law requires for physicians, beside an initial and rather elementary official training, is mostly about the decision of introducing acupuncture into our clinical practice and later on, further investigating new applications for an ancient discipline. This ancient idea is about recognizing the human organism’s potential for self-healing. The body’s ability for damage repair sometimes only needs guidance, i.e. marking the points on which to focus, ideally at an early stage. If this fails and the in-built potential proves either insufficient or inadequate, then an external cure is required, i.e. an external intervention and the administration of exogenous substances.
Apparently, we should always keep in mind that one of the definitions of “experience” is “a systematically repeated error”. Therefore, self-criticism, perhaps even self-sarcasm, should readily be available and potential therapeutic failure should not be credited to the discipline of acupuncture, but rather to the provider himself. Similarly, the patient’s previous unsuccessful experience with acupuncture should neither discourage us nor prevent us from trying again. It is extremely common to classify acupuncture with other therapeutic modalities, which lack both the scientific background and the long evolution of acupuncture. This classification is totally unjustified and particularly annoying. A healing system that has survived for 25 centuries has probably proven its worth, while the same cannot be said for other disciplines, still classified as “alternative”.