Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society
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Post-mastectomy pain syndrome (PMPS) is a common and severe neuropathic pain syndrome arising after breast surgery. Since few effective allopathic treatments exist for PMPS, many patients may seek assistance from complementary and alternative medicine. Here, we report a case of a woman with severe and persistent PMPS who was successfully treated with acupuncture.
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Acupuncture is gaining in popularity as a treatment for chronic low back pain (cLBP); however, its therapeutic mechanisms remain controversial, partly because of the absence of an objective way of measuring subjective pain. Resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI) has demonstrated aberrant default mode network (DMN) connectivity in patients with chronic pain, and also shown that acupuncture increases DMN connectivity in pain-modulator and affective-emotional brain regions of healthy subjects. ⋯ This result suggests that modulation of the DMN by acupuncture is related to its therapeutic effects on cLBP. Imaging of the DMN provides an objective method for assessment of the effects of acupuncture-induced analgesia.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A sham-controlled trial of acupuncture as an adjunct in migraine prophylaxis.
Migraine is one of the most common types of headache, with significant socioeconomic effects. Prophylactic drugs are used to prevent migraine headaches but are unpromising. ⋯ Acupuncture is applicable as an adjunct to prophylactic drugs in migraineurs in whom the number of attacks does not fall with prophylactic medication.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Acupuncture with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) versus acupuncture or NSAIDs alone for the treatment of chronic neck pain: an assessor-blinded randomised controlled pilot study.
To investigate the feasibility and sample size required for a full-scale randomised controlled trial of the effectiveness of acupuncture with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for chronic neck pain compared with acupuncture or NSAID treatment alone. ⋯ This pilot study has provided the feasibility and sample size for a full-scale trial of acupuncture with NSAIDs for chronic neck pain compared with acupuncture or NSAID treatment alone. Further research is needed to validate the effects of acupuncture with NSAIDs.
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Case Reports
Infectious sacroiliitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus following acupuncture: a case report.
Determination of the origin of infectious sacroiliitis (ISI), a rare form of septic arthritis, is often time consuming and clinically difficult owing to its various presentations, which include joint, skin and urinary tract infections. This report describes the diagnosis, determination of infectious origin and treatment of a case of ISI attributed to the use of acupuncture for the treatment of lower back pain. We report on a 61-year-old man who developed right hip pain and fever 3 days after undergoing acupuncture over the right buttock region for the treatment of lower back pain. ⋯ The patient was cured after a 4-week course of antimicrobial treatment. Clinicians should take a history of acupuncture use when evaluating patients presenting with fever of unknown origin and/or bacteraemia and consider the possibility of ISI when evaluating patients with hip pain and infectious signs after acupuncture or other possible causes of infection. This indicates the importance of performing clinically clean procedures to prevent septic complications when treating patients with acupuncture.