People with chronic back, neck or joint pain commonly seek acupuncture and chiropractic care for relief, but many don’t tell their doctors about it, a new study reports.

根据一项新研究报告，慢性背部疼痛、颈部疼痛或关节疼痛的患者常求助于针灸和脊椎推拿疗法来缓解病痛，但他们大多都不会将这点告诉他们的医生。

Researchers said they were surprised to find that of some 6,068 chronic pain patients who responded to a questionnaire, 47 percent reported using chiropractic care, 32 percent said they used acupuncture, and 21 percent used both. Only 42 percent said they used neither acupuncture nor chiropractic. All of the patients were members of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, a group model health maintenance organization based in Portland, Ore.

研究人员表示，他们惊讶地发现，在6068名回答调查问卷的慢性疼痛患者中，有47%报告正在使用脊椎推拿疗法，32%表示正在接受针灸治疗，21%同时使用了上述两者。只有42%的患者称自己既没有接受针灸，也没有使用脊椎推拿疗法。所有患者均为团体模式健康维护组织Kaiser Permanente Northwest（总部设在俄勒冈州波特兰市）的成员。

Many of the patients studied did not share information about alternative treatments with their regular doctors, and the information was not in their electronic medical records. About a third of acupuncture users and 42 percent of chiropractic care users did not tell their regular doctors about the care.

参与研究的患者中有许多都未将自己接受替代疗法的情况与家庭医生共享，电子病历中也没有相关信息的记载。在接受针灸治疗的患者中，有三分之一并未告知自己的家庭医生，而在使用脊椎推拿疗法的患者中该比例达42%。

Some patients who paid for the care privately may have been eligible for insurance coverage, said Dr. Charles Elder of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, the paper’s first author. “Alternative treatments work for a lot of patients,” he said, but communicating with your doctor is important. “If I don’t know what my patients are doing, I can’t advise them.”

该论文的第一作者，Kaiser Permanente健康研究中心(Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research)的查尔斯·埃尔德(Charles Elder)说：之前自费进行替代治疗的部分患者现在或可使用医保来报销这些费用。“替代疗法对很多患者都奏效，”他说，但是与医生沟通非常重要。“如果我不知道我的患者在做什么，我就没法给他们建议。”

The study was published in The American Journal of Managed Care.

该研究发表在《美国管理保健杂志》(The American Journal of Managed Care)上。