Effect of Eight Vacuity Theory Adopted Complex Acupuncture Therapy on Patients with External Epicondylitis

Abstract

Objectives : The objective of this study was to report two cases that patients with external epicondylitis were improved by based on 'eight vacuity' theory bloodletting therapy, acupuncture therapy and bee venom pharmacopuncture. Methods : In this study, patients were treated with bloodletting therapy, then acupuncture therapy and bee venom pharmacopuncture to Ashi point on eight vacuity of elbow in the patients without retention of needles. Subsequently, electroacupuncture and Dong-qi acupuncture treatment were implemented in order to strengthen the effect of acupuncture. In terms of evaluation methods, visual analog scale(VAS) score, range of motion(ROM), grip strength and physical examination were used to assess external epicondylitis-related symptoms. Results : VAS score decreased, ROM and grip strength were increased and physical examination was improved in all cases. Conclusions : It was suggested that the symptoms of intractable external epicondylitis could be improved by eight vacuity theory adopted bloodletting therapy, acupuncture therapy and bee venom pharmacopuncture.

A Systematic Review of Acupuncture for Tennis Elbow

“…1). There were 9 RCTs [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] and 18 [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] case reports included in the review. The main characteristics of these studies was presented in tables (Tables 2 and 3).…”

“…The highest frequency of treatment sessions in case reports was 57 [38], and the lowest was 1 session [35,42]. The number of treatment sessions were varied amongst the 18 case reports [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

“…In the case reports, the most used intervention was acupuncture which was used in 7 cases [25,27,33,36,38,40,42], followed by bee venom acupuncture which was used in 6 studies [28,29,33,37,38,40], burning acupuncture was used in 4 studies [29,31,32,34], and acupotomy [35], and thread embedding acupuncture were used in 1 study each [26]. In addition, there were many case reports in which combination therapy was used.…”

“…Numeric rating scale (NRS) was used as a pain evaluation index in 4 case reports [25,26,37,36]. Grip strength was used in 6 RCTs [16,18,20,[22][23][24] and 7 case reports [25,27,28,32,34,37,38]. In addition to these evaluation (I/C, Baseline→after 6th treatment within 2 weeks) 1) PVAS (%): 100→50/100→68 (p = 0.000) 2) PFGS: Improvement was shown in both group (p = 0.045) → EA is superior to MA.…”

“…The evaluation time in 4 RCT [17,[21][22][23] and 15 case reports [25][26][27][28][29]31,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]42] were assessed immediately after the last treatment. In the studies which conducted follow up appointments after the last treatment, 1 study had a 4-month duration from the start of treatment to last visit [32], and 1 case report had a 6-week duration [30]; 1 had a 2-week duration [18], 1 had a 2-month duration [24], 1 had a 3-month duration [16], 1 had a 6-month duration [19] and 1 had a 24-month duration [20].…”