你們爲什麼要瞞着大夫做鍼灸和按摩

People with chronic back, neck or joint pain commonly seek acupuncture and chiropractic care for relief, but many don’t tell their doctors about it, a new study reports.

根據一項新研究報告，慢性背部疼痛、頸部疼痛或關節疼痛的患者常求助於鍼灸和脊椎推拿療法來緩解病痛，但他們大多都不會將這點告訴他們的醫生。

Researchers said they were surprised to find that of some 6,068 chronic pain patients who responded to a questionnaire, 47 percent reported using chiropractic care, 32 percent said they used acupuncture, and 21 percent used both. Only 42 percent said they used neither acupuncture nor chiropractic. All of the patients were members of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, a group model health maintenance organization based in Portland, Ore.

研究人員表示，他們驚訝地發現，在6068名回答調查問卷的慢性疼痛患者中，有47%報告正在使用脊椎推拿療法，32%表示正在接受鍼灸治療，21%同時使用了上述兩者。只有42%的患者稱自己既沒有接受鍼灸，也沒有使用脊椎推拿療法。所有患者均爲團體模式健康維護組織Kaiser Permanente Northwest（總部設在俄勒岡州波特蘭市）的成員。

Many of the patients studied did not share information about alternative treatments with their regular doctors, and the information was not in their electronic medical records. About a third of acupuncture users and 42 percent of chiropractic care users did not tell their regular doctors about the care.

參與研究的患者中有許多都未將自己接受替代療法的情況與家庭醫生共享，電子病歷中也沒有相關信息的記載。在接受鍼灸治療的患者中，有三分之一併未告知自己的家庭醫生，而在使用脊椎推拿療法的患者中該比例達42%。

Some patients who paid for the care privately may have been eligible for insurance coverage, said Dr. Charles Elder of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, the paper’s first author. “Alternative treatments work for a lot of patients,” he said, but communicating with your doctor is important. “If I don’t know what my patients are doing, I can’t advise them.”

該論文的第一作者，Kaiser Permanente健康研究中心(Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research)的查爾斯·埃爾德(Charles Elder)說：之前自費進行替代治療的部分患者現在或可使用醫保來報銷這些費用。“替代療法對很多患者都奏效，”他說，但是與醫生溝通非常重要。“如果我不知道我的患者在做什麼，我就沒法給他們建議。”

The study was published in The American Journal of Managed Care.

該研究發表在《美國管理保健雜誌》(The American Journal of Managed Care)上。