Back pain is a major cause of ill health and time lost from work.
The 'orthodox' treatments often have limited success and the NHS has identified back pain as a priority condition for research. A literature review revealed that acupuncture can be an effective treatment though there is a lack of high quality research trials. The Foundation therefore identified low back pain as a priority research area. The purpose was to test out our methods of assessing the outcomes of treatment. These results were encouraging in terms of procedures, end-point measures and outcomes.