Background. Diabetic patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) suffer from low quality of life (QOL). We aim to assess the effectiveness of auricular acupressure for QOL improvement in these patients. Materials and Methods. Sixty-two participants were randomly assigned to an auricular or a control arm in a randomized controlled trial. Participants in the auricular arm were instructed to perfor...

The reflexive property of the ear can cause various physical attributes to appear on the auricle in the presence of bodily disorders. The association of auricular signals (presence or absence of discoloration, marks after pressing, tenderness, and electrical resistance) and diabetes mellitus (DM) should be further investigated because auricular diagnosis is an objective, painless, and noninvasi...

Several methods for auricular cartilage engineering use tissue engineering techniques. However, an ideal method for engineering auricular cartilage has not been reported. To address this issue, we developed a strategy to engineer auricular cartilage using silk fibroin (SF) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel. We constructed different hydrogels with various ratios of SF and PVA by using salt le...

OBJECTIVE Since a known growth-of-cartilage framework is used for reconstruction of microtia under the Brent technique, we set out to address the behavior of the framework under the Nagata technique. DESIGN A retrospective analysis of costal cartilage auricular reconstruction procedures. PATIENTS A total of 28 patients who underwent costal cartilage auricular reconstruction between 1998 and...

Background. Uremic pruritus (UP) is a common symptom in patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis for end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Objective. To determine the clinical efficacy of auricular acupressure therapy on pruritus in hemodialysis patients and to explore possible underlying mechanisms. Methods. Patients receiving maintenance hemodialysis at a referral medical center were recruited ...

Objective: This study aims to determine the association between auricular signals and the risk factors of metabolic syndrome (MS). Methods: A case-control study with an equal number of cases and controls matched by age group and gender was conducted. A total of 204 participants were recruited. Patients were verified as having MS based on the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) criteria. Aur...

Congenital anomalies of the first branchial cleft are rare. Approximately 32 cases of cervicoauricular fistulae have been reported in the past hundred years: this includes the writer's own case in this review. The majority of sinuses and fistulae derived from the lateral cervical vestiges are concerned with the second pharyngeal pouch and its corresponding cleft. Auricular and pre-auricular fis...

This study investigated the effects of auricular acupuncture on athletes' recovery abilities after exercise. Subjects were selected from twenty-four male elite university basketball players, randomly divided into two groups: auricular acupuncture group (AAG), and normal control group (NCG), each group containing twelve subjects. Auricular acupuncture was experimented to each AAG athlete while n...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to determine whether parental auricular acupuncture reduces parental preoperative anxiety and thus allows children to benefit from parental presence during induction of anesthesia. METHODS Mothers of children who were scheduled to undergo surgery were randomly assigned to an acupuncture intervention group (auricular press needles at relaxation, tranqui...