Controversy
The TMS diagnosis and treatment protocol are not accepted by the mainstream medical community. Sarno himself stated in a 2004 interview with Medscape Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine that "99.999% of the medical profession does not accept this diagnosis." Although the vast majority of medical doctors do not accept TMS, there are prominent doctors who accept it. Andrew Weil, a notable medical doctor and alternative medicine proponent, endorses TMS treatment for back pain. Mehmet Oz, a television personality and Professor of Surgery at Columbia University, includes TMS treatment in his four recommendations for treating back pain. Richard E. Sall, a medical doctor who authored a book on worker's compensation, includes TMS in a list of conditions he considers possible causes of back pain resulting in missed work days that increase the costs of worker's compensation programs.
Critics in mainstream medicine state that neither the theory of TMS nor the effectiveness of the treatment has been proven in a properly controlled clinical trial, citing the placebo effect and regression to the mean as possible explanations for its success. Patients typically see their doctor when the pain is at its worst and pain chart scores statistically improve over time even if left untreated; most people recover from an episode of back pain within weeks without any medical intervention at all. The TMS theory has also been criticized as too simplistic to account for the complexity of pain syndromes.
Sarno responds that he has had success with many patients who have exhausted every other means of treatment, which he says is proof that regression to the mean is not the cause.
Read more about this topic: Tension Myositis Syndrome
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