Effects of acupuncture and homeopathy: prospective documentation. Interim results H Walach 1 * and C Gu Èthlin 1 1 Department of Environmental Medicine, University Hospital Freiburg, Hugstetterstrasse 55, D-79106 Freiburg I.BR, Germany Objective: To evaluate the overall effectiveness in general practice of homeopathy and acupuncture, and to estimate costs. Method: Prospective documentation of all patients insured with an insurance company who are provided with free treatment of acupuncture and homeopathy. 4000 patients treated by acupuncture and 1000 patients by homeopathy will be enrolled. All patients will be followed up from the beginning of treatment for another 4 years. Doctors will provide data on each visit (diagnosis, treatment, change of symptoms, etc.), patients will ®ll in questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of treatment, as well as each year after the end of treatment (complaints, current treatment, general health status as measured by the MOS-SF 36). Insurance data on workdays lost will be provided by the insurance company. Results: Data acquisition and entry is continuing. Up to now data from the ®rst questionnaire of 1453 patients have been entered and 951 patients have returned the follow-up questionnaire. Doctors' ratings of the change of the main diagnosis shows improvement of around 80% with only 2% deteriorated. This impression is vindicated by the patients' follow-up questionnaire. 36% patients rated the therapy as ef®cacious, 47% as partially ef®cacious. Quality of life as measured by the SF 36 questionnaire improved signi®cantly in all dimensions. Data on workdays off will be presented. Conclusion: Homeopathy and acupuncture are clinically effective in a variety of medical problems. British Homeopathic Journal (2000) 89, Suppl 1, S31±S34 Keywords: prospective documentation; health insurance; Germany; homeopathy Introduction In Germany the law provides the possibility to health insurance companies to make available unconven- tional medicine in the course of a so-called `trial phase' to their customers for 5 years, provided that this trial phase is evaluated scienti®cally. The scien- ti®c evaluation should, at the end of this trial period, make possible decisions about the ef®ciency of the alternative therapeutic approaches. The federate health insurance corporation Innungskrankenkassen (IKK) decided to evaluate homeopathy and acupunc- ture in such a trial phase. This company traditionally is the health insurance company of self-employed artisans or small companies and their family members. It covers about 6% of the insured population of Germany. In a representative survey the IKK showed that about 75% of IKK insured subjects were interested in consulting with an acupuncturist, a homeopathic doctor or other provider of unorthodox medicine. Therefore, from the beginning of 1995 or 1996 all members of the IKK health insurance company in the states of Baden-Wu Èrttemberg, Sachsen Anhalt and Sachsen are potentially able to consult a medically quali®ed practitioner of acupuncture or homeopathy. Objectives The evaluation of the trial phase aims to answer the following questions. *Correspondence: Dr H Walach, Department of Environmental Medicine, University Hospital Freiburg, Hugstetterstrasse 55, D-79106 Freiburg I.BR, Germany. British Homeopathic Journal (2000) 89, Suppl 1, S31±S34 ß 2000 Macmillan Publishers Ltd All rights reserved 0007±0785/00 $15.00 www.nature.com/bhj