Recently Sermo had an interesting case report. A young woman, a few hours after undergoing cupping and acupuncture to her upper back, developed dyspnea and presented to the emergency department. There she was found to have a pneumothorax requiring chest tube placement.
I’m certainly not an expert on pneumothoraces, cupping, or acupuncture. Maybe the occurrence is coincidental, though it certainly is temporally concerning.
If I were to cause a pneumothorax doing an electromyography and nerve conduction velocity of the chest wall or upper back, I’m sure I’d have a lot to answer for. Beyond just arranging care for the patient and explaining things to her and her family members, I’d probably have to deal with a board investigation and/or malpractice claim.
Dr. Allan M. Block
Yet, in my experience, people who provide such services rarely face legal accountability, whereas their counterparts in allopathic medicine regularly do so. How many late-night TV attorney ads have you seen that say “have you been injured by an acupuncturist?”
Me, neither.
I’m not going to go into the questions of whether acupuncture, or even cupping, do anything at all. But this case also raises the point that people tend to think of “alternative” medical treatments as things that, while of unclear benefit, are generally harmless.
The fact is that There probably never will be. No matter how well trained and intentioned the person doing it is, there is always the chance of something going wrong. Human error, mechanical failure, bad luck. As they say, dung happens.
In medicine we think about the risk-benefit ratio and proceed accordingly. But the risk, no matter how low, is never zero. People need to understand this applies to pretty much everything health-related. Even over-the-counter supplements, no matter how great their claims may sound (also unproven) have their issues.
Caveat emptor.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.