Accupuncture
Mark Dunning
"I wonder if you have heard of acupuncture in the treatment of Usher
syndrome.
I have sketchy information from clinics in Canada and India who both
claim to have treated the condition with 'remarkable' results.
I am very sceptible but as you are aware we look at everything which
will help our kids.
The Dr Chopra in India has given hayley a contact who has had the
treatment and is happy with the results but the cost is high and
involves a short stay in new Delhi."
If you have any comments on this I would appreciate them.
Jennifer Phillips
justified. Cessation and reversal of retinal degeneration is an
extraordinary claim indeed, particularly for a treatment that is not
even applied directly to the retina. If I were making this decision,
I would want to be as sure as I could possibly be about the safety and
effectiveness of any treatment I would elect for my child, especially
if it involved such considerable expense and time away from home.
I would want to know as much as I could about the proposed mechanism
by which the treatment is supposed to work, or, at a minimum, see
convincing, clinical evidence that it did work. For me, an e-mail
from someone corroborating the acupuncturist's claims would fall short
of this 'burden of proof'. I would want to know things like how the
vision improvements were measured, what experimental controls were
used for these measurements, how many patients were evaluated, what
the success rate was, etc. I would also want to know the explanation
for how this particular method of acupuncture is thought to work, and
why, if it is just a matter of placing needle in a particular part of
the skin, it is necessary for you to travel to one of these two
clinics to receive this treatment rather than seeking an acupuncturist
in your own neighborhood.
I plan to do a bit more research on this topic as soon as my schedule
permits, and I will post again with any new information.