Presentation summary

1/ Acupuncture has been established in the last decades as a treatment option, not only for pain but for a greatvariety of diseases and indications.

Acupuncture has become globally very popular among patients and health. Coming from an ancient empirical approach as part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Acupuncture hasspreaded worldwide. The WHO has had published a treatment recommendation list in 1975, including a broadrange of medical conditions from asthma to urticaria. At this time, only very few well-designed studies with lowor very low quality existed.

Since the NIH consensus statement in 1998 Acupuncture research has increased exponentially, not only innumber but also in quality of research. In 2017 John Mac Donald started an approach for an overview and published the Acupuncture Evidence Project.

Since 2017 the amount of evidence in the field of acupuncture drastically increased, urging for a continuation of another comparative review.
Our “State of Evidence”, covering the years 2017 – 2022 tried to evaluate by GRADE system all systematic reviews and metanalyses in Acupuncture. It aimed to further clarify the grade of evidence for acupuncture invarious medical conditions in this period.

Our review found high evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture for 10 medical conditions and for 82 indications with potential positive evidence Acupuncture effectiveness, together in 92. In our opinion, thisshows the increasing quality of evidence for Acupuncture over the last years.

2/ Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) is one of the great traditional medical systems, with an unbroken tradition going back to the 3rd century BC, and is the systematic empirical evaluation of herbs in China, one of the hotspots of botanical biodiversity (over 12% of all known plants have their origin in China). Througout history ishas continually devoloped in response to clincial challenges and this process has continued by modern research, integrates modern western diangostic techniques, research and knowledge. The underlying systematic diagnostic procedure, the physiological and pathological ideas and syndrom diagnosis are the very core of Chinese medicine and all related techniques have their roots here.

Good clinical practice
CHM uses normally a combination fo 2-15 herbs, to enhance efficiacy, ameliorate side effects and help withadditional symptoms. The use of CHM, which uses also some very potent herbal compounds which may be ina inappropriate way/dosage sometimes toxic, needs a very good clinical training and medical knowledge, especially about interactions with western drugs. Therefore ICMART s fighting for an appropriate education and as a basis only physicians should allowed to uns CHM. Some good trials for atopic dermatitis, irritabel bowel syndrome, allergic conditions have shown prove for theefficiacy of CHM.

Other conditions which can be treated with good results and seem to be efficient, (of course much more gooddata are needed) are for example:
– acute viral infections of the respiratory tract,
– atopic dermatitis
– IBS
– dysmenorrhoea, premenstrual complex, menopausal syndrome,
– infertility and impotence treatment,
– acute and recurrent cystitis and prostatits,
New trials and chances
In recent years some ground breaking CHM- RCT’s have been published in high-ranking journals
– Chinese Herbal Medcine Ting Xin Luo Pian in Myocardial infarction 2024
– CHM in Heart Failure
This trials and results will be discussed.