Acupuncture in Medicine Letters

A questionnaire survey to determine patient's knowledge, opinions and experience of acupuncture in an NHS GP practice

Corbett, L., Prestwich, S. — 2011-11-23T04:52:00-08:00

Introduction

Recent guidelines from NICE are encouraging the incorporation of acupuncture into pain management strategies within the NHS.1 NHS information on acupuncture suggests it has many benefits2 and increasingly GP practices are offering acupuncture within their practice or referring patients for acupuncture.3 However, there is little research into patient's knowledge, opinions and experience of acupuncture. This questionnaire survey was directed at patients who were attending their GP practice in West London, which also offers acupuncture.

Methods

Ethical review by academic staff generated the opinions that the study raised no major ethical issues and that formal ethical approval was not needed. Ethical approval was, however, gained from the chairman of the Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trustand the doctors at the practice. I distributed the questionnaires to all patients attending the practice over five consecutive days. I expressed confidentiality verbally to...

Effect of acupuncture for gastrointestinal activity differs depending on the pathophysiological condition

Oh, D.-S., Kang, W., Choi, S.-M., Son, C.-G. — 2011-11-23T04:52:00-08:00

Acupuncture is a traditional therapy that stimulates specific acupuncture points on the human body. The number of users of acupuncture worldwide has steadily increased over the last 40 years.1 Acupuncture is thought to function in a therapeutic manner through homeostatic mechanisms, according to traditional literature. Thus, opposing symptoms such as hypertension and hypotension can be treated through acupuncture administered at the same points. For example, acupuncture at Bahui (GV20) has been shown to be effective in treating both hypertension and hypotension.2 In addition, acupuncture elicits a more effective response when it is applied to a pathological condition rather than during normal physiological status. Acupuncture at LI4 and PC6 reduces heart rate variability in a fatigued state, but it has no effect in normal state volunteers.3

Herein we present additional clinical data supporting the idea that the effect of acupuncture is dependent on the...

Acupuncture in the treatment of chronic pelvic pain secondary to pelvic inflammatory disease

Ozel, S., Arslan, H., Tufan, Z. K., Uzunkulaoglu, T., Akarsu, D., Seven, A. — 2011-11-23T04:52:00-08:00

Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) primarily involving the cervix, uterus and fallopian tubes is a serious infection in women. It can present in different forms such as endometritis, salphangitis, oophoritis, tubo-ovarian abscess or peritonitis. Antibiotic treatment is recommended because failure to treat PID can result in infertility (20%), ectopic pregnancy and chronic pelvic pain (40%).1 Immune deficiency, inappropriate antibiotic regimens or delay in the management of first infection can lead to chronic PID, which is defined as symptoms continuing for more than 6 months with relapsing pelvic infections after an acute PID attack. Definitive medical cure of the disease is not available and the quality of life is decreased.1–3 We performed a study to investigate the effectiveness of acupuncture in chronic pelvic pain secondary to acute PID and to determine whether PID has any effect on infertility.

This was a pilot study...

Cardioversion as a cause of persistent myofascial trigger points and pain

Freedman, J. E. — 2011-03-07T16:07:13-08:00

A 76-year-old man underwent routine cardioversion for atrial flutter. Within 24 h of the procedure he complained of severe and persistent pain over and around his left scapula. He attended the accident and emergency department and was advised that this was unrelated to the procedure. This advice was reiterated at his cardiology follow-up appointment a week later. He failed to respond to physiotherapy or analgesia of escalating strength. He became distraught with pain, leading to sleepless nights, and presented on multiple occasions to his general practitioner (GP) surgery. He was eventually seen opportunistically, 5 months after the onset of his symptoms, by the author, a GP trained in Western medical acupuncture. He was found to have multiple trigger points in his left-sided infraspinatus, subscapularis and trapezius muscles. These presented as exquisitely tender taut bands, with the patient's pain being reproduced on palpation. Owing to the exquisite pain on palpation,...

Acupuncture for cancer-induced bone pain: a pilot study

Paley, C. A., Johnson, M. I. — 2011-03-07T16:07:13-08:00

Introduction

Metastatic bone pain in cancer is often severe, unremitting and poorly controlled,1 and the drugs used to control the pain can have unpleasant side effects.2 Patients may survive months or years after diagnosis3 and therefore it is important for them to enjoy as high a quality of life as possible. Acupuncture represents a potential adjunctive treatment for cancer-induced bone pain (CIBP) and yet a recent Cochrane Review4 and an earlier systematic review5 found no studies investigating its use in CIBP. There is also a lack of information about the suitability of acupuncture for these patients. The primary aim of this pilot study was to investigate tolerability, safety and patient satisfaction with a single acupuncture treatment on patients with CIBP in order to inform the design of a larger feasibility trial.

Methods

A non-randomised design was...

Letter on whiplash injury

Lie, J. — 2011-03-07T16:07:13-08:00

I read Adrian White's summaries and commentaries on the Pilot study in whiplash1 2 with great interest. In the United Kingdom, a high percentage of car insurance claims were related to whiplash injury, most commonly as a result from road traffic accidents. It can have a major impact on the patients' income as some can be off work for more than 6 months after injury.3 These patients usually present with multiple trigger points on their trapezius and cervical spine within minutes to hours of their initial injuries. These points can be treated very effectively with acupuncture. I am not surprised that there is so little research into acupuncture for whiplash injury because most of these patients will go straight to an emergency department (ED), rather than their general practitioners or physiotherapies in the community. There are generally more acupuncturists in the community in...

Auriculotherapy and acupuncture in space sickness

Volf, N. — 2010-12-08T10:29:26-08:00

I would like to tell readers about my recent experience of auriculotherapy. After taking off from Mérignac, the plane flew in parabolic arcs (figure 1), executing 31 of these in the space of 3 h at an altitude of 10 km. A parabolic flight includes three phases:

A ‘vertical’ ascent with a 2 g acceleration (sensation of heaviness when it is impossible to raise the arms, and a feeling that one's ‘chin is dropping down’).

Microgravity (weightlessness) at 0 g (one literally floats up to the ceiling, without any control on body position or movements, and, as the head is the heaviest part of the body, one usually turns upside down, with feet up in the air ... this ‘amazing’ state lasts for about 25 s.

A violent dive and a period of hypergravity (2 g), when one falls down in whatever...

Cortical activation by Yamamoto new scalp acupuncture in the treatment of patients with a stroke: a sham-controlled study using functional MRI

2010-12-08T10:29:26-08:00

Yamamoto new scalp acupuncture (YNSA) was first introduced 37 years ago.1 Today, it is the most frequently used microsystem in acupuncture next to auriculotherapy. Benefits associated with YNSA have been shown in uncontrolled studies in patients after stroke,2 in patients with musculoskeletal pain3 4 and in emergency medicine.5

In the Western world stroke is still the leading cause of disability in adults, often in the form of hemiparesis. The goal of this study was to correlate the effect of YNSA in patients with hemiparetic stroke to cortical activation visualised by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)6.

Methods

The neurological correlates of YNSA were studied in 17 patients with ischaemic stroke in the right hemisphere who had residual paresis of the left hand, and in 19 healthy volunteers. A new acupuncture needle for MRI developed by Schockert was...

Effect of acupuncture on salivary immunoglobulin A after a bout of intense exercise

Matsubara, Y., Shimizu, K., Tanimura, Y., Miyamoto, T., Akimoto, T., Kono, I. — 2010-12-08T10:29:26-08:00

To the Editor: We would like to thank Professor Wiwanitkit for his interest and thoughtful comments regarding our manuscript. We think it has been recognised that the change could be normal physiological response in the subjects because the response is reproducible among a wide range of subjects with similar exercise in previous papers.1–4 We agree that there are few data on the background of the subjects such as showing in table 1.

Table 1

Subjects' characteristics

Number12Age (years)23.6±0.3Height (cm)171.4±1.6Body mass (kg)66.0±2.4Body fat (%)16.2±1.1Maximal oxygen uptake (ml/kg/min)41.6±1.6

Data are expressed as mean±SE.

In terms of the quality control of laboratory determination for salivary immunoglobulin A, we are sure it should be accurate...