The effectiveness and benefits of procedure-based TM/CAM therapies usually depend on the individual practitioner’s education and training level as well as clinical experience and the efficacy of the particular TM/CAM therapy.

In order to guide consumers in the selection of appropriate TM/CAM procedure-based therapies, national authorities and international or national/local professional organizations can develop national lists of widely used TM/CAM procedure-based therapies, together with the respective claims based on existing clinical evidence. Different levels of claims can be presented, such as suggested in section 4.4.1. The WHO document Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials may serve as a good example (30).

The quality of a certain procedure-based TM/CAM therapy is largely dependent on the skills of the TM/CAM practitioner (see section 4.6).