No abstract

Dipyrone and tramadol showed similar efficacy for early pain relief after abdominal hysterectomy. Nausea and vomiting, possibly caused by the tramadol, occurred more frequently in those patients. In this group, the need of the antiemetic drug ondansetron was also higher.

It is known from previous work that acupuncture stimulation modifies the somesthetic afferent to different extends depending on the acupoint studied. In this study, somatosensory evoked potentials of 21 healthy volunteers are recorded. When acupoint LI-4 (Hoku) is stimulated, it produces noticeable modifications, with a significant increase of latency and decrease of amplitude of the peaks which reflect the primary cortical afferent. Comparison of these results with the absence of changes when the experiment is repeated by stimulating a non-acupuncture point, ensures that the effects observed depend on the special quality of the acupuncture point stimulated and not on the mere repetitive stimulation on the skin.

No abstract

Based on the observation that repeated acupoint stimulation elicits evoked potentials whose latency varies as a result of the stimulus intensity we assessed the evoked potential elicited by stimulus of three acupoints (Hegu, Shenmen and Houxi), comparing the results to the potentials produced by median nerve stimulus and nonacupunctural point. Fourteen healthy individuals were studied, and no modifications related to the Hegu and Shenmen point potentials increased with the amount of stimuli, until it reached a plateau at around 400 stimuli. It did not vary for Houxi and the nonacupunctural point. We conclude that the somesthesic afference from acupunctural points must involve control circuits that are quantitatively different for each point.