Purpose
Chronic low back pain (LBP) is a common musculoskeletal disorder that affects everyday life; moreover, it occasionally causes disability and increases medical expenditure. This pragmatic randomized clinical trial aims to investigate the effects of pharmacopuncture on chronic LBP by comparing the effectiveness of pharmacopuncture and physiotherapy strategies.
Patients and Methods
In this two-armed, parallel, multi-center randomized controlled study, the participants will randomly undergo 10 sessions of pharmacopuncture therapy or physiotherapy over five weeks based on the randomization outcomes. The primary outcome will be the numeric rating scale (NRS) score of LBP. The secondary outcomes will include the NRS score of radiating leg pain, visual analog scale (VAS) score of LBP and radiating leg pain, Oswestry disability index, the Korean version of the Roland–Morris disability questionnaire, patient global impression of change (PGIC), short Form-12 health survey version 2, and 5-level EuroQol-5 dimension (EQ-5D-5L).
Conclusion
This protocol aims to examine the comparative effectiveness of pharmacopuncture, which is a widely used therapy in Korean medicine, with respect to the standard therapy through a pragmatic randomized controlled trial to present useful data to facilitate clinical or policy decision making.
Trial Registration
Clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04833309); Clinical Research Information Service (KCT0006088).
Cervical myelopathy (CM) is generally considered an indication for surgery in Western medicine. Case reports have indicated that Korean medicine (KM) treatments are effective in improving CM-associated symptoms. We investigated the effectiveness of non-surgical KM treatment of CM patients through a retrospective chart review and follow-up survey. Patients and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the medical records and surveyed follow-up data of CM patients with neurological symptoms admitted to KM hospitals between January 2011 and January 2018. The admission and discharge assessments included the numeric rating scale (NRS) for neck and arm pain, neck disability index (NDI), and 5-level EuroQol 5-dimension (EQ-5D-5L). A follow-up survey was conducted about whether surgery was subsequently performed or recommended, symptom recurrence, discomfort in daily living, current treatment, as well as NRS, NDI, EQ-5D-5L, and patient global impression of change (PGIC) scores.
A fishing lamp is the instrument for attracting distributed fish to a certain place, and is the lighting system mainly used in fishery. In the inshore fishing, most fishing lamps are used for squid and hairtail jigging fishing, and the light source of the fishing lamps mainly used is metal halide with 1.5 KW in electric power consumption. We will analyze the irradiance distribution according to depth because squid is attracted towards light. To analyze irradiance distribution by such fishing lamps, data for seawater Type-II among the seawater types defined in 1976 are applied to East Sea. However, the Type-II data have limitations in analyzing precise seawater transmission characteristics, due to insufficient information on deep seawater. This paper analyzed the irradiance distribution of fishing lamps using the measurement of transmission characteristics in the seawater in East Sea up to 100 m underwater instead of Type-II data, which is not sufficient for transmission. A compensation factor was drawn between the actual measurement data and Type-II data through seawater transmission characteristics simulation.
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