Rationales and treatment approaches underpinning the use of acupuncture and related techniques for plantar heel pain: a critical interpretive synthesis.

CONCLUSIONS: The complexity of the field of acupuncture was illustrated through the 'lens' of PHP. The 'patchwork' metaphor provides a unifying framework for a previously divergent community of practice and research. Several directions for future research were identified, such as: importance of prior duration; existence of diagnostic subgroups; and how practitioners make clinical decisions and report their findings. CIS was found to provide visibility for multiple viewpoints in developing theory and modelling the processes of 'real world' practice by acupuncturists addressing the problem of PHP. PMID: 27390253 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source: Acupuncture in Medicine - Category: Complementary Medicine Authors: Tags: Acupunct Med Source Type: research