Acupuncture Dramatically Reduces Pain in Paediatric Pain Management Clinic

ORLANDO, FL -- October 17, 2002 -- As part of a paediatric pain management program, acupuncture reduces pain scores by over 5 points on a 10-point scale and improves overall well being, new research suggests.

Yuan-Chi Lin, MD, of the Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, reported his findings here October 16 at the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA).

"Our experience strongly suggests that acupuncture can be safely and successfully incorporated into paediatric pain management practice," Dr. Lin said. "Physicians need to be aware of the benefits of acupuncture and begin to integrate acupuncture into their own paediatric pain management programs."

Acupuncture is the stimulation of special acupuncture points on the body, usually by insertion of fine hair-thin needles for therapeutic or preventive purposes, Dr. Lin explained. In this retrospective analysis, He reviewed his experience integrating acupuncture into a university-based paediatric pain and symptom management program, the Pediatric Medical Acupuncture Service, established in October 2000.

Over a one-year period, 243 children (167 females and 76 males) mean age 14.3 years received an average of 8.4 sessions of acupuncture treatments. At the initial consultation, the chief complaints included pain in the low back, the hips and lower extremities (30 percent), abdomen (25 percent), head (23 percent), neck, shoulder, arm (10 percent), chest (6 percent), pelvis (4 percent), and others (2 percent).

Patients received weekly acupuncture treatment for the duration of six weeks. At each visit, patients reported pain on a 0 to 10 scale using the visual analogue scale (VAS), with the score reported to a researcher other than the acupuncturist. The researchers used a paired t-test for statistical analysis.

At the end of the six-week treatment period, mean pain scores decreased from 8.3 to 3.3 (p<0.01), with the overall VAS pain score was significantly reduced by 5.0 ± 1.5 (p<0.01). In addition, patients reported increased school attendance, improved sleep patterns, increased participation in extracurricular activities.

There were no side effects or complications related to the acupuncture treatment, Dr. Lin said.

The National Institute of Health Consensus panel on acupuncture concluded that acupuncture is effective in treating nausea and vomiting, adult postoperative surgery pain, postoperative dental pain and showed promising results for headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome (JAMA, 1998;280:1518-1524).