Methods In a large midwestern hospital, group physical therapy is provided to joint replacement patients. Orthopedic surgeons added acupuncture to the standard post-operative care for total knee and hip replacements provided through the Joint Replacement Center (JRC). Acupuncture is introduced in the pre-hospital class for surgery preparation and provided immediately after physical therapy on p...

A 26-year-old top female athlete (height 157 cm), who took part in competitive sport similar to middle- and long-distance running, became amenorrhoeic in February 2009. In late May 2009, athletic amenorrhoea was diagnosed and a norgestrel-ethinyl estradiol combination (norgestrel 0.5 mg and ethinyl estradiol 0.05 mg three times daily) was prescribed for 2 weeks. She experienced menstrual bleedi...

Background. Acupuncture has been shown to reduce preoperative anxiety in several previous randomized controlled trials (RCTs). In order to assess the preoperative anxiolytic efficacy of acupuncture therapy, this study conducted a meta-analysis of an array of appropriate studies. Methods. Four electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, and CINAHL) were searched up to February 2014. In the m...

Background: Hypertension is a major health problem with serious medical and fi nancial consequences. Experimental studies in animals and clinical studies in humans have demonstrated that acupuncture can reduce blood pressure signifi cantly in hypertensive patients. The objective was to assess the effect of acupuncture on blood pressure in hypertensive patients treated at a complementary medicin...

Although acupuncture theory is a fundamental part of the Huangdi Neijing, the clinical application of the needle therapy in ancient China was always a limited one. From early times there have been warnings that acupuncture might do harm. In books like Zhang Zhongjing's Shanghanlun it plays only a marginal role. Among the 400 emperors in Chinese history, acupuncture was hardly ever applied. Afte...

While healers and practitioners have used acupuncture to relieve pain for millennia, modern clinical trials assessing the efficacy of this approach yield seemingly inconsistent and contradictory results. For example, in multiple rigorous studies focusing on chronic lower back pain, acupuncture outperformed standard-of-care (eg, combination of drugs, physical therapy, and exercise); surprisingly...

Background Little information exists regarding the use of acupuncture in combination with allopathic treatment of infertility. Objective To describe the use of acupuncture to stimulate follicle development in women undergoing in vitro fertilization. Design, Setting, and Patients Prospective case series of 6 women receiving intracytoplasmic sperm injection and acupuncture along with agents for o...

BACKGROUND Many breast cancer patients suffer from hot flush and medical menopause as side effects of treatment. Some patients undergo acupuncture, rather than hormone therapy, to relieve these symptoms, but the efficacy of acupuncture is uncertain. This meta-analysis evaluated the efficacy of acupuncture on hot flush and menopause symptoms in women with breast cancer. METHODS A literature se...

Although acupuncture has been used in the treatment of autism for many years, almost no formal clinical trials have been devoted to confirm the effectiveness of the acupuncture for the disease in the western countries, where a big population of children and family have been suffering from the shortage of effective therapy. This review is to summarize the reports from about 20 clinical trials of...

Acupuncture is an effective, safe and convenient therapy that has been applied for 2,500 years. The acupuncture researches have obtained significant improvement with the technical support of the life sciences and the studies of acupuncture have in turn accelerated the development of biomedical science. The effects of acupuncture influence important physiopathologic and biological activities, in...