ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the nonthermal bioelectromagnetic treatments, such as microwave therapy, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, and pulsed signal therapy. Integrative medical practice is often held up to inappropriate standards. The assumed gold standard for evidence-based medicine, the randomized controlled trial, is actually appropriate for only a small part of medicine. Conventional medicine, based in biochemistry, is typically interested in cause-and-effect relationships between underlying mechanisms of illness, treatments designed to alter those mechanisms, and the observed results for the patient. In conventional medicine, electrotherapy is used primarily for the iontophoresis, neuromuscular stimulation, or tissue heating. The proliferation of electromagnetic devices claiming to have a cure for just about everything, comes all too often without any revelation of the engineering and too few open clinical studies.
