HEGU is OK

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G'day TCMers,

-well knock me over with a feather: the Medical

Dieties admit [at least this once]that TCM works

cheers,

dar

 

Am J Emerg Med. 2007 Oct;25(8):887-93.

 

Prehospital analgesia with acupressure at the Baihui

and Hegu points in patients with radial fractures: a

prospective, randomized, double-blind trial.

Lang T, Hager H, Funovits V, Barker R, Steinlechner B,

Hoerauf K, Kober A.

 

Department of Anesthesiology and General Intensive

Care, Medical University of Vienna, A-1090 Vienna,

Austria. thomas.lang

 

BACKGROUND: Pain during transportation is a common

phenomenon in emergency medicine. As acupressure has

been deemed effective for pain management by the

National Institutes of Health, we conducted a study to

evaluate its effectiveness in prehospital patients

with isolated distal radial fracture. METHODS: This

was a prospective, randomized, double-blind study.

Thirty-two patients were enrolled. Acupressure was

performed either at " true " points or at " sham " points.

Vital signs and pain and anxiety scores were recorded

before and after the acupressure treatment. Normally

distributed values were compared using the Student t

test. RESULTS: Pretreatment scores for pain and

anxiety were similar in the 2 groups (47.6 +/- 8.9 vs

51.2 +/- 8.7 visual analog scale [VAS] score for pain,

52.4 +/- 6.0 vs 47.5 +/- 9.3 VAS score for anxiety).

At the hospital, patients in the true-points group had

significantly lower pain (36.6 +/- 11.0 vs 56.0 +/-

13.3 VAS score, P < .001) and anxiety scores (34.9 +/-

22.2 vs 53.4 +/- 19.7 VAS score, P = .022).

CONCLUSION: Acupressure in the prehospital setting

effectively reduces pain and anxiety in patients with

distal radial trauma.

 

PMID: 17920972 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]