acuforwell - July 31st, 2006

Though acupuncture has gained tremendous popularity gradually all over the United States, most people are still under the impression that alternative medicines and therapies such as acupuncture are rare and are available only in very few, atypical places. But contrary to the above misconception, the fact is that acupuncture treatments are now carried out in almost all the mainstream hospitals ubiquitously in the United States.

According to the CBS news, more than 25 percent of the hospitals across the United States offer alternative treatments. A lot of surveys were conducted to learn about the extent to which conventional and traditional treatments were being followed up, in the United States.

A survey on about 1400 hospitals in the US showed that one out of every four hospitals facilitates alternative therapies and treatments. A survey conducted by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the year 2002 showed that more 50 percent of the Americans felt that combining complementary and alternative medicines with conventional methods would work better. The American Hospital Association conducts surveys every two years and has come out with the fact that hospitals offering one or more complementary and alternative medicine have increased from 8 percent in the year 1998 to 27 percent in 2005. Many hospitals in the United States, such as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, have begun to offer alternative therapies alongside Western medicine. Researchers found with complementary and alternative medicines are more common in the mid-west, such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin and less common in the west coast and in the south, such as Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee.

It was seen that the top six complementary and alternative medicines offered on outpatients were massage (71%), tai chi or yoga (47%), relaxation training (43%), acupuncture (39%), guided imagery (32%) and therapeutic touch (30%) and the top six offered to inpatients were massage (37%), music therapy (26%), therapeutic touch (25%), guided imagery (22%), relaxation therapy (20%) and acupuncture (11%).

Researchers Sita Ananth of Health Forum, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association, and William Martin, PsyD, of the College of Commerce at DePaul University in Chicago, in a news release, state "More and more, patients are requesting care beyond what most consider traditional health services. And hospitals are responding to the needs of the communities they serve by offering these therapies."