**Author details**

*Acupuncture - Resolving Old Controversies and Pointing New Pathways*

training and the length of experience of the practitioner.

explore everything that could be beneficial to the patient.

**3.7 A treatment for a few open-minded people**

largely from patient to patient.

**3.8 Rejection by a part of clinicians**

using a blunt device. All of them can produce false-positive results.

**3.6 Professional competencies are not universally standardized**

(with skin perforation), or a simulated needle insertion (without skin perforation)

Questions about the competency to practice acupuncture are discussed world-

In our consumerist society, most clients seek immediate solutions for their health problems. Compared to drug treatment, acupuncture may seem a boring, tardy, and expensive option to many people. The treatment with acupuncture typically involves several sessions and follow-up, which may be inconvenient for some patients. Many times, a private treatment has to be paid out-of-pocket, when it is not covered by health insurance policies. The cost of a course of sessions varies widely between providers, and the whole treatment can be expensive. Furthermore, it is unpredictable what will happen when the patient reduces the sessions' frequency or stops the treatment. Patients have to be adequately informed on what to expect, in order to be motivated by realistic prospects. They also must understand that the effectiveness of acupuncture cannot be generalized, as its effect varies

Some clinicians state they find no reason to indicate stranger therapeutic systems, since the value and success of conventional biomedical science are just enough. For clinicians who think so, having to learn the principles and indications of other practices would be an unnecessary task. Such colleagues would indicate acupuncture only when they have no further resources to offer (or even when they want to get rid of the patient, etc.). In some cases, disregarding acupuncture is actually an excuse (conscious or unconscious) for lack of time (or commitment) to

As the game goes on, acupuncture needs to prove on a daily basis that it has nothing to do with other picturesque therapies. A lot of energy must be spent to unstick acupuncture of weird East prescriptions such as the powder of rhinoceros' horn, a useless pinch of keratin that is leading this animal to extinction. However, this is a fact: acupuncture came to stay. The opposition to this therapeutic modality would never eliminate it from the canon of good complementary therapies. However, such opposition can clutter many advances for acupuncture use, from no

wide. Today, each country has its local legislation to assign who is allowed to perform acupuncture. Sometimes, anyone with some qualifications or experience is allowed to be called acupuncturist, even people without formal graduation in a healthcare course. In these cases, the practitioner receives education only focusing on acupuncture and/or TCM, and acupuncture will be offered outside a clinical environment. The risk of diagnosis or treatment delay, due to symptoms masking on a serious disease, is increased if clinical red flags are ignored [11]. The patient protection must be the priority when deciding on training standards and licensure requirements for practitioners. In acupuncture, clinical results vary with the level of

**6**

**4. In short**

Marcelo Saad1 \* and Roberta de Medeiros2

1 Spiritist Medical Association of S. Paulo, S. Paulo, SP, Brazil

2 Centro Universitário S. Camilo, S. Paulo, SP, Brazil

\*Address all correspondence to: msaad@uol.com.br

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
