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Impact of acupuncture on patient outcome

By Haroon Nazir.

The whole world is becoming a global village. More the people are coming near to each other; the more the ideas are being exchanged. This exchange of ideas has influenced many aspects of human life on earth, for example; social life, personal preferences, health seeking behaviors etc. As the population advanced in the world, much progress has been made in terms of science and technology to meet the present needs of people. With evolution of diseases, many methods of healing developed in the earlier centuries which were effective enough to provide relief to the ill people. These methods were based on the theory of life forces which, the former healers believed as balancing between the mind and body relationship. The people are now changing their trends to move towards those ancient healing techniques which we now call “Complimentary and Alternative Therapies (CAT)”. That is only because of reasons that they are cheap, effective and have fewer side effects. Complimentary and alternative therapies offer perfect solution to the pain relief with fewer or no side effects and long term effectiveness. Through my paper, I will try to highlight the benefits of these therapies in terms of effectiveness, side effects and cost effectiveness.

Acupuncture is effective in many ways like in Management of pain, drug addiction and the sleep quality. Giles and Muller (2003) conducted a study in which they compared effectiveness of the acupuncture and spinal manipulation among the Australian people. . In the results they found that acupuncture (9.4%) was more effective than the medication (5%). Bernstein (2000) conducted research on drug addiction among the addicted people. She found that after having acupuncture, participants revealed that “the relaxation experience was a balancing element for anxiety and depression because of the endogenous opiate peptide production” (Clement-Jones et al.,1979; Pomeranz, 1978,1982; Wen, Ho, Ling, Ma & Choa, 1979) cited by Bernstein (2000). Sleep quality of the individuals can be increased by acupuncture because the participants in the Bernstein (2000) study explained that they had unexpected benefit of acupuncture which was the increased quality of sleep and that, on the other hand, is usually a problem in drug addicts who try to recover as they face withdrawl symptoms.

Acupuncture has no or minor side effects and it can also be use with other medicines for the side effects control. The side effects of this therapy are insignificant as compared to those of conventional medicine. Chung, Bui and Mills (2003) report the adverse effects of acupuncture like bruising, needle site bleeding, nausea, vomiting etc. and they also explain some complications which are rare like hepatitis B, septicemia, pneumothorax etc.

We take simple example of pain. They give relief to the patient but for particular time only and their side effects are even more, like dependence and addiction. Griggs and Jensen (2006) reveal that “up to 12,000 admissions per year are the result of gastric disturbances induced by NSAIDs”. Acupuncture offers perfect solution to the pain relief with fewer or no side effects and long term effectiveness. The side effects are easily manageable because simple use of aseptic techniques can reduce the chances of these side effects. Moreover, acupuncture can be used with other medications to relieve the side effects and this quality makes this therapy more useful.

Acupuncture is more cost effective and is easily accessible for people. This therapy is cheap because it is offered by traditional healers on locally available resources, and the other reason is that it is used widely among the people. Chang, Bui and Mills (2003) say that “acupuncture is the most commonly used therapy among those who seek CAM”. They further stated a US survey which showed that among families who used the CAM, 16% of them were acupuncture users. The other study among 80 Israeli family physicians (51% men & 48% women) revealed that 24% had the practice of CAM, out of which acupuncture was most common i.e. 28%. These studies show the wide use of acupuncture as complimentary and alternative therapy and we can also imagine that it is easily reachable than the other conventional medicines which the people get from the local pharmaceutical companies or health care facilities.

All the researches that I have mentioned support the use of acupuncture since its impact on patient outcome is positive. These therapies are not only efficacious but they are also saving our cost in health maintenance since they are cheap methods of healing. This shows that although being old enough, the complimentary therapies are still useful and they can more beneficial if we integrate our modern technology with these and consider the cost so that every individual can have access to this type of healing. The main importance is that they carry fewer side effects so the patient outcomes are not compromised; instead they are met to the maximum patients’ wish There are many other aspects that require research from the acupuncture effectiveness point of view. These are the cardiovascular diseases (CVD), neurological and may be many infectious diseases. In CVD, acupuncture can be tested for its effectiveness on hypertension and angina. In infectious diseases, the researchers can work on the impact of acupuncture on the immunity of patients. In neurology, the research can be conducted on the prevention of disability following the neurological diseases like stroke.