[Acupuncture and chronic pain : practical considerations for primary care physicians].

Different international clinical guidelines from expert committees recommend acupuncture on equal terms with conventional pharmacological or interventional techniques for the management of chronic pain. Thus, this traditional Chinese medicine technique has won its place in a primary care chronic pain management plan. It should not be reserved as a last resort, when all other techniques have failed. Inspired by the concept of integrative medicine, this article proposes an overview of currently validated indications, and offers some tools for the primary care physician who wishes to orient a patient towards an acupuncture treatment.