Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina analysed the results of 15 clinical trials on the effectiveness of acupuncture. The researchers concluded that patients getting acupuncture before or during various types of operations had significantly less pain afterwards than patients who did not get acupuncture.

Acupuncture also reduced other side effects associated with the pain drugs and surgery. Acupuncture patients experienced 1.5 times lower rates of nausea, 1.6 times fewer reports of dizziness and 3.5 times fewer cases of urinary retention compared to patients had surgery and no acupuncture.

“The use of acupuncture is still very under-appreciated…” Dr. Tong-Joo Gan, vice chairman of Duke’s anaesthesiology department said in an interview to Reuters

The research was presented at a conference of the American Society for Anaesthesiology in San Francisco. (Image by)

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Posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 1:03 am under acupuncture, nausea, pain relief, side effects, surgery. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.