Lupine Publishers | A Critical Review of Publications related to Al-Hijama Therapy

Lupine Publishers | Journal of Clinical and Community Medicine

Short Communication

Evidence-based clinical practice emphasizes the use of information from well designed and conducted research in healthcare decision-making. It largely depends upon the outcomes from prospective randomized clinical trials in which the number of patients are sufficiently high to ensure that the results are robust. Such trials need to be adequately powered and to define from the beginning what magnitude of difference between treatments is being sought. The classical approach when assessing the value of new medications has been the use of blind assessments in which both patients and assessors do not know which drug or placebo they are receiving. The application of such an approach in Al-Hijama is either impractical or even unethical as it would require use of sham wet cupping. A recent review from Iran Bamfarahnak et al. [1] suggested Al-Hijama is currently prescribed for up to 120 diseases that are difficult to treat, including cutaneous (21.7%), musculoskeletal (15%), and central nervous system (13.3%) disorders. However, the number of such treatments subjected to rigorous assessment is relatively limited. In this review those studies which have dealt with pain will be considered first. Subsequently studies dealing with hypertension and cardiovascular risk factors will be assessed. In addition, its potential benefit in management of shingles will be considered. Al-Hijama and wet cupping are used in many other conditions, but research papers published in peer reviewed journals during the last twenty years are mainly restricted to the above fields. Of note few of the reported studies draw attention to the religious distinction between the technique of Al-Hijama and simple wet cupping, the recipients and the practitioners. However, in 2014 the Taibah theory was put forward as the basis for a physiological explanation of how Al-Hijama works and its distinction from simple wet cupping [2].

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