Abstract
Treatment by acupuncture and moxibustion and by orthopedic medicine have both been found to be effective against lower back pain. The time required for the treatment to become effective has been found to correspond with the Weibull distribution. Using the parameters arrived at by the distributon a sequential comparison of both treatments was conducted using the Monte Carlo simulation, using randomized numbers from the distribution. Although there are problems involving the estimated value of the distribution based on complete data, and the difference in quality of the subject groups, it has been found in 100 trials (inolving 100 pairs of subjects) that acupuncture and moxibustion tend to take effect significantly faster (p=0.07) than orthopedic medicine. I present these results as a hypothesis to be used in randomized clinical trials. Furthermore, I propose a new method of clinical evaluation, involing simulation derived from the investigation of models, in cases where it is difficult to form control groups for comparison.
