PURPOSE The aim of the present work was to evaluate the availability of acupuncture in UK hospices and specialist palliative care services and to identify any barriers to the use of acupuncture in these settings, to determine the characteristics of available acupuncture services and of practitioners providing acupuncture, and to determine awareness of the evidence base for the use of acupunctur...

The objective of this study was to identify and analyze nurses' perceptions about diseases that are treated by acupuncture, taking into consideration: (1) the diseases of nurses who had received acupuncture treatment; (2) nurses' diseases which might be treated by acupuncture; (3) suggestions of diseases treatable by acupuncture. This exploratory study was performed with 33 nurses working at 11...

Purpose. To observe the change of transcutaneous CO2 emission on meridian points or nonacupoints when the different needle sensations were gotten and study the associativity between Deqi acupuncture and periphery constitution energy metabolism effect. Method. 20 healthy volunteers were punctured on Neiguan (P6) in different ways including sham, shallow, Deqi acupuncture, and Deqi plus pressed P...

BACKGROUND This paper aims to describe the characteristics of physicians and interventions of a large, multicenter randomized trial of acupuncture for migraine (ART Migraine) in order to enable acupuncturists to assess the study interventions. PATIENTS AND METHODS 302 patients suffering from migraine were randomized to 12 sessions of semi-standardized acupuncture (6 predefined basic points, r...

With growing use of acupuncture treatment in various clinical conditions, the question has been posed whether the reported effects reflect specific mechanisms of acupuncture or whether they represent placebo responses, as they often are similar in effect size and resemble similarities to placebo analgesia and its mechanisms. We reviewed the available literature for different placebos (sham proc...

OBJECTIVES To ascertain the extent of and trends in the use of acupuncture in Australian general practice and the characteristics of patients receiving publicly subsidised acupuncture services from general practitioners (GPs). DESIGN Secondary analysis of national patient Medicare data for claims by all non-specialist medical practitioners for Medicare Benefits Schedule items for an attendanc...

Objectives. Strong aversions to acupuncture have been an obstacle to understanding its intrinsic action of acupuncture. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate the nature and extent of fear of acupuncture treatment. Our study aims to develop and validate an instrument that evaluates a patient's fear of acupuncture treatment. Methods. We have developed an acupuncture fear scale, a 16-item instrument w...

BACKGROUND Nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy are troublesome symptoms for some women. We undertook a single blind randomized controlled trial to determine whether acupuncture reduced nausea, dry retching, and vomiting, and improved the health status of women in pregnancy. METHODS The trial was undertaken at a maternity teaching hospital in Adelaide, Australia, where 593 women less than 1...

Randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials are recommended for evaluation of a treatment's efficacy with the goal of separating the specific effects (verum) from the non-specific ones (placebo). In order to be able to carry out placebo-controlled acupuncture trials, minimal/sham acupuncture procedures and a sham acupuncture needle has been used with the intention of being inert. However, cl...

OBJECTIVE To systematically evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating or preventing allergic rhinitis (AR). DATA SOURCES We retrieved data from 17 electronic databases, nonelectronic searches of conference proceedings, our own files of articles, and bibliographies of located articles. STUDY SELECTION All randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of acupuncture for AR were considered fo...