Acupuncture -- a traditional Chinese medical treatment -- before and during surgery reduces patients' post-operative pain as well as the need for pain-killing medication, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina analyzed the results of 15 clinical trials on the effectiveness of acupuncture, which consists of inserting thin needles into specific body points, and concluded it is valuable for pain control in surgery patients.
The 15 trials showed that patients getting acupuncture before or during various types of operations had significantly less pain afterward than patients who did not get acupuncture. These patients also required less morphine or other opioid pain medication after surgery, the researchers said.
"The use of acupuncture is still very under-appreciated," Dr. Tong-Joo Gan, vice chairman of Duke's anesthesiology department, said in a telephone interview. "Western doctors are typically not trained (in acupuncture) and they really are not familiar with how it works. I think practitioners such as surgeons and anesthesiologists need to have an open mind."
In terms of pain-drug side effects, the acupuncture patients experienced 1.5 times lower rates of nausea, 1.6 times fewer reports of dizziness and 3.5 times fewer cases of urinary retention compared to the other patients, the study found.
These findings augment a growing body of evidence on the value of acupuncture in improving the surgical experience for patients, the researchers said.
For instance, the National Institutes of Health says that acupuncture has also been shown to reduce nausea after chemotherapy and surgery.
According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, scientists do not fully understand how acupuncture works, believing it might help the activity of the body's pain-killing chemicals or affect the regulation of blood pressure and flow.
Source: Xinhua/agencies
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