Acupuncture for Postoperative Pain

Duke University Medical Center is using acupuncture to help with postoperative pain. Having interned at a hospital where I treated people for pain who had just had surgery, it is nice to see that Duke Medical Center is administering acupuncture before AND throughout the surgery. The result has been less pain killers being used. Read the interview below with the anesthesiologist at Duke.

Acupuncture can help patients with pain control
6/19/2008 11:32 AM
By: Ivanhoe, Broadcast News

T.J. Gan, M.D., an anesthesiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., talks about acupuncture to treat postoperative pain.

Q: How do you believe acupuncture can affect postoperative pain?

Dr. Gan: Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese art and has been practiced for thousands of years. One of the more significant roles is treating pain condition. There has been a fair amount of evidence both in animals and human that stimulating the acupuncture points can result in the release of body own pain killers systems such endorphins and enkephalins.

Q: When you do perform the acupuncture?

Dr. Gan: The acupuncture needs to be inserted about half an hour to 45 minutes before surgery because it typically takes about five or 10 minutes for the body to start releasing some of these pain killing effects of the acupuncture. We typically maintain the acupuncture throughout the surgery to the end of surgery.

Q: In your study, was there any need for follow up acupuncture to treat postoperative pain?

Dr. Gan: In this study, we did not look at that but that pain is a continuing process and certainly having acupuncture after surgery would be very helpful to maintain a good pain control and also reduce the amount of morphine that patients may require after surgery.

Click here to read the rest of the interview.

also, check out the video on you tube.

posted by: Michael G. Pingicer, M.S., L.Ac.
212.894.0767
http://www.amazinghealing.com/