Auricular acupuncture for pain relief after total hip arthroplasty – a randomized controlled study

Abstract

Auricular acupuncture (AA) is known to be effective in treatment of various pain conditions, but still there have been no randomized controlled studies of AA for treatment of acute postoperative pain. Therefore we tested whether AA of specific points is superior to sham acupuncture for complementary analgesia after total hip arthroplasty in a patient-anesthesiologist-evaluator-analyst blinded study. The patients were randomly allocated to receive true AA (lung, shenmen, thalamus and hip points) or sham procedure (4 non-acupuncture points on the auricular helix). Permanent press AA needles were retained in situ 3 days after surgery. Postoperative pain was treated with intravenous piritramide (opioid receptor agonist with analgesic potency of 0.7 compared with morphine) using a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pump. The time to the first analgesic request, the amount of postoperative piritramide via PCA and pain intensity on a 100-mm visual analogue scale (VAS-100) were used to evaluate postoperative analgesia. Intraoperative anesthetic requirement, incidence of analgesia-related side effects, inflammation parameters and success of patients' blinding were also recorded. Fifty-four patients (29 AA and 25 controls) completed the study. Piritramide requirement during 36 h after surgery in AA group was lower than in control: 37+/-18 vs. 54+/-21 mg; mean+/-SD; P=0.004. Pain intensity on VAS-100 and incidence of analgesia-related side effects were similar in both groups. The differences between the groups as regard patients' opinions concerning success of blinding were not significant. Findings from our study demonstrate that AA could be used to reduce postoperative analgesic requirement.

Auricular acupuncture for pain relief after ambulatory knee surgery: a randomized trial

“…This rate is at the lower limit of the withdrawal rates for other acupuncture studies for postoperative pain relief (11% to 25%). 12,13,17 To avoid dropouts due to change in type of surgery, it would be expedient to perform randomization after the surgical procedure, in the recovery room. However, we chose not to perform acupuncture after surgery, because of experimental and clinical reports indicating that administration of anesthetic before acupuncture weakens or annuls the effects of acupuncture.…”

Auricular Acupuncture Treatment for Insomnia: A Systematic Review

“…Abbate 9 summarized 15 modalities used in AA, such as needles, pellets (Semen vaccariae ear seeds), magnetic pearls, electricity, et cetera. Current studies show that AA helps relieve a large number of diseases and complaints (i.e., anxiety, 10 postoperative pain, 11,12 chronic low-back pain, 13 and problems related to spinal-cord injuries 14 ).…”

Effect of Integrated Medicine on Physical Performances of Orthopaedic and Stroke Patients: A Propensity Score-Matched Study

“…To our knowledge there are no studies involving the use of both homeopathy and acupuncture in rehabilitation after hip or knee replacement; several studies show the efficacy of acupuncture alone [25][26][27][28][29][30][31], although here too the studies were carried out in the East. Moreover, a study carried out in Korea [32] describes the patients' difficulty in moving between two hospitals, one for conventional western therapies and one for CAM.…”