Acupuncture & Post-Op Pain: A Systematic Review

Posted in For Patients

acupuncture

 

Throughout medical history, doctors have tried all sorts of strategies to relieve and manage pain, particularly in the aftermath of a surgical procedure. And while a bevy of studies have focused on the variety of ways that acupuncture has been used to treat patients in recovery, one team set out to gather and analyze the data from all randomized controlled trials involving acupuncture and postoperative pain management. Here is some of what they found:

Where did their data come from?

In their attempts to collect the comprehensive available information for a systematic review, researchers included all relevant studies from Medline (1966-2007), CINAHL, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (2006), and Scopus, and extracted data related to the following postoperative metrics:

  • opioid consumption
  • pain intensity
  • opioid-related side effects (nausea, vomiting, pruritus, urinary retention, dizziness and sedation).

In addition, only trials that used a control group were included—which means that each study controlled for the placebo effect by administering acupuncture treatments with “sham” needles.

Ultimately, data from 1166 postoperative patients was gathered, of whom 668 received acupuncture in the wake of their procedure.

What did the data reveal?

Across the board, the data revealed the efficacy of acupuncture as a postoperative treatment and deepened our understanding of just how far those benefits go.

When it came to pain, pooled data showed significantly lower pain scores (both in pain duration and intensity) in the groups that received acupuncture 24 hours after surgery. Also, compared with control groups, groups that received acupuncture consumed less opioids (on a statistically significant basis), and experienced less adverse opioid-related side-effects (even when opioid consumption was not reduced). In addition, there were no statistically significant negative side effects of the acupuncture itself.

Interestingly, researchers noted that the positive effects of acupuncture were most marked 72 hours after surgery, where those receiving acupuncture required almost 30% less morphine,, suggesting that as anesthesia wears off, acupuncture becomes even more effective.

What’s more, since post-op patients have been observed to rate their postoperative experience equally on the basis of pain and opioid side-effect management, the benefits of acupuncture to a patient’s overall quality of life is magnified not only through pain relief, but through reduction of the need for the drugs that cause many unpleasant side effects, not to mention the reduction of those adverse side-effects themselves.

What to take away

Postoperative care is almost as important to your health and comfort as the surgical procedures themselves — so why not use every treatment at your disposal to improve your experience of the healing process? Effective, postoperative pain management remains a challenge for hospitals and health care providers everywhere, with 86% of surgical patients reporting moderate, severe or even extreme pain after surgery, where opioids and their attendant side-effects are their only recourse.

The systematic review of recent research involving pain and acupuncture has confirmed what Chinese medicine has known for over 3000 years. Acupuncture works. Contact us today to get it working for you.

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