Today E.B.M. (Evidence Based Medicine), is the model that is the most applied in the modern medicine to evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment

The gold standard of research that it considers are the systematic reviews and the meta-analyses conducted from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This model, considered the most reliable regarding the experimentation and the marketing of new drugs, is also applied to Acupuncture which, sometimes, is accused too superficially not to pass the threshold of this test. Is it legitimate to evaluate Acupuncture as any drug treatment and investigate its effectiveness according to the same parameters?

For many years the Eastern researches, even though the important acquisitions that they reported, have been accused to be methodologically weak and, consequentely, too little valid, in order to be considered in the best reviews, which often draws for directions to the treatment of the different diseases.

So, with the aim of assessing and, at the same time, improve the quality of clinical trials in Acupuncture in 2001 were published and updated in 2010 the guidelines STRICTA (Standards for reporting intervention in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture) which are an extension of the declaration CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials), focused on key aspects of research including, for example, the method to follow for the randomization, for the blind or for statistical computing.

Although the formulation of guidelines is essential to standardize the methods of research in Acupuncture some problems still exist; is the hierarchical model adequate to give comprehensive answers to the complexity of the Diseases? Does the Pragmatic Trial represent an effective method to track the validity of a treatment? What epistemological and ontological changes are needed to updated a traditional care practice? And finally, which are the factors that play a role in determining the outcome of a therapy?