Perceived benefit of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) for back pain: A national survey

Background: complementary and alternative medicine (cam) is commonly used to treat back pain,but little is known about factors associated with improvement. methods: we used data from the 2002 national health interview survey to examine the associations between the perceived helpfulness of various cam therapies for back pain. results: approximately 6% of the us population used cam to treat their back pain in 2002. sixty percent of respondents who used cam for back pain perceived a great deal of benefit. using multivariable logistic regression,the factor associated with perceived benefit from cam modalities was reporting that a reason for using cam was that conventional medical treatment would not help (odds ratio [or],1.46; 95% ci,1.14-1.86). the 2 factors associated with less perceived benefit from cam modalities were fair to poor self-reported health status (or,0.58; 95% ci,0.41-0.82) and referral by a conventional medical practitioner for cam (or,0.7; 95% ci,0.54-0.92). using chiropractic as a reference,massage (or,0.62; 95% ci,0.46-0.83),relaxation techniques (or,0.25; 95% ci,0.14-0.45),and herbal therapy (or,0.3; 95% ci,0.19-0.46) were all associated with less perceived benefit whereas those with similar perceived benefit included yoga/tai chi/qi gong (or,0.71; 95% ci,0.41-1.22) and acupuncture (or,0.71; 95% ci,0.37-1.38). conclusions: the majority of respondents who used cam for back pain perceived benefit. specific factors and therapies associated with perceived benefit warrant further investigation.