Minutus

By sheer coincidence I saw an ad for Scottish College of Homoeopathy publications this morning and Louise Rohan's study is now available in all its glory from their new bookshop. It costs £20.00 but would be the thing to have if you collect original papers on homeopathic research or have a role where you might need to quote extensively and authoritatively.
I can see the logic in saying that arnica before an op might be counter-productive but research like this seems to back up the very common experience that it isn't.
We are great rumour-mongers as a breed and from time to time it seems to be a good idea to have a reality check.
Theresa
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The reality check to me is sx similarity - everything else is just
guess work, unless an epidemic suggests otherwise but we are dealing
with an individual here. Joy
http://www.homeopathicmateriamedica.com
http://www.homeopathicmateriamedica.blogspot.com
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Hi,
The trial was looking at the effect of *Arnica*. Some patients in both trial groups had aspirin or antibiotics. Those who ended up with aspirin *and* arnica fared worse in terms of bleeding and pain than those who had just arnica or, indeed, just aspirin, as if the effect of the arnica reduced the analgesic property of aspirin and increased its anticoagulant properties, or vice versa. The trial was of arnica vs placebo, not of aspirin.Those who had arnica did better, unless they had aspirin too.Trials like this get complicated as the ethics of leaving a placebo group with nothing at all are dubious, especially where pain is an issue. ( Of course, no-one knows which the placebo group is at the time!) This came up in the Elsevier published trial of which Gaby sent a summary to the list earlier.
This is not my own research and i really don't know why they gave the arnica before or didn't use paracetemol but, as I said, an account of it with charts etc was published in HIP in 2002 and the whole thing is available from the Scottish College of Homeopathy.

As far as my own view is concerned, I am not sure why knowing someone is going to contact a disease with a certain range of symptoms can make prophylaxis a reasonable course of action (even though they might not have caught it ) but knowing that someone is going to definitely experience a pretty predictable range of symptoms following a molar extraction is not. Unless the sole purpose of prophylaxis is to stop someone catching a disease at all - but it is claimed also to modify and moderate the course of the disease if the patient does get it, and to have done that in the various epidemics of historical record. Having said this, I am not the greatest fan of prophylaxis as it seems so often practised so I'll probably leave all this here!

Theresa
Fran wrote
Did the trial look at whether Paracetamol had the same negative effect
as aspirin?

Thanks.
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Hi Teresa,
So all of these were given before the surgery? It seems *really* odd
to give aspirin--well known for its "blood thinning" effects--before
surgery; I would have thought that was *begging* for trouble... Hm...
Well, interesting in any case!

Shannon