Copyright © 2016 G. Litscher and P.-J. Rong. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This special issue includes six interesting manuscripts. Auric-ular acupuncture is a method which has been successfully used in various f...

BACKGROUND A common alternative treatment for substance abuse is auricular acupuncture. The aim of the study was to evaluate the short and long-term effect of auricular acupuncture on anxiety, sleep, drug use and addiction treatment utilization in adults with substance abuse. METHOD Of the patients included, 280 adults with substance abuse and psychiatric comorbidity, 80 were randomly assigne...

BACKGROUND Partly because of a lack of a conventional, effective treatment for cocaine addiction, auricular acupuncture is used to treat this disorder in numerous drug treatment facilities across the country for both primary cocaine-dependent and opiate-dependent populations. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of auricular acupuncture for the treatment of cocaine addiction. METHODS Eig...

BACKGROUND Endometriosis is a prevalent gynaecological condition, significantly affecting women's lives. Clinical presentations may vary from absence of symptoms to complaints of chronic pelvic pain, most notably dysmenorrhoea. The management of pain in endometriosis is currently inadequate. Acupuncture has been studied in gynaecological disorders but its effectiveness for pain in endometriosis...

thousand years in China and Japan; the earliest literary reference is in The Yellow Emperor’s book of internal medicine, dating from the second or third century BC. Acupuncture reached Japan in the sixth century of the Christian era, and was introduced into Europe by ten Rhijne (1683), who had learnt about it in Japan. As a therapy, it spread very slowly in Europe. The first European and Americ...

This is an annual special issue. The current issue is the 2013 issue which includes eleven interesting papers. Acupuncture has been used for medical treatment for thousands of years. A large number of empirical data is available, but the technical quantification of effects was not possible up to now. Using electroacupuncture, needle, or laser stimulation and modern biomedical techniques, it was...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Acupuncture-point stimulation (APS) in postoperative pain control compared with sham/placebo acupuncture or standard treatments (usual care or no treatment). Only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were included. Meta-analysis results indicated that APS interventions improved VAS scores significantly and also reduced total morphine...

Deqi sensation, a psychophysical response characterized by a spectrum of different needling sensations, is essential for Chinese acupuncture clinical efficacy. Previous research works have investigated the component of Deqi response upon acupuncture on acupoints on the trunk and limbs. However, the characteristics of Deqi sensations of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) on auric...

Ear acupuncture works by reducing painful sensations with analgesic effect through microsystem therapy and has been demonstrated to be as effective as conventional therapies in the control of facial pain. This clinical trial aimed to evaluate the adjuvant action of auricular acupuncture through an observation of the evolution of temporomandibular and masticatory myofascial symptoms in two group...