This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • CME Course for This Article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Osteoarthritis  • Complementary and Alternative Medicine  • Pain  • Alert me on articles by topic

Brian Berman, MD, Discussant

JAMA. 2007;297:1697-1707.

Mrs A, an active 60-year-old woman, has a history of degenerative osteoarthritis of her knee with pain that has progressed over the past 8 years. She has undergone arthroscopic surgery for a meniscal tear and has taken nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), glucosamine, and chondroitin sulfate occasionally, but generally does not like taking medications. She is open to other therapeutic approaches and wants to know if acupuncture can help the pain, improve function, and stop her condition from progressing. The evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture for knee pain and other common treatments, including exercise, NSAIDs, glucosamine and chondroitin, and intra-articular knee injections are compared, and costs and methods of acupuncture and selecting an acupuncturist are discussed.

Author Affiliation: Dr Berman is Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Director, Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.

RELATED ARTICLE

Knee Pain
John L. Zeller, Cassio Lynm, and Richard M. Glass
JAMA. 2007;297(15):1740.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Understanding pain in osteoarthritis
Gwilym et al.
J Bone Joint Surg Br 2008;90-B:280-287.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT