Acupuncture enhances pain management in the emergency room

Acupuncture enhances pain management in the emergency room

Adding acupuncture to standard emergency department (ED) care is a feasible and acceptable strategy that can significantly reduce acute musculoskeletal pain compared with usual care alone, according to a study carried out in the USA. Conducted as a pragmatic two-stage adaptive open-label randomised clinical trial, the study focused on pain in the neck, back and extremities. Stage 1 compared auricular acupuncture (AA) based on the Battlefield Acupuncture protocol with peripheral acupuncture (PA) targeting the head, neck and extremities, to determine feasibility, acceptability and efficacy. Stage 2 evaluated the effectiveness of the acupuncture interventions versus usual care (UC) alone, with licenced acupuncturists administering acupuncture and blinded ED providers delivering UC. The primary outcome was the change in pain intensity on an 11-point numeric rating scale one hour after treatment. Both acupuncture styles were found to be similarly feasible and acceptable in Stage 1, leading to all three groups continuing into Stage 2. Among 236 participants, results showed that AA+UC reduced pain by 1.6 points more and PA+UC by 1.2 points more, compared with UC alone. Participants in the acupuncture groups reported high satisfaction with the intervention. The authors conclude that their results support the integration of acupuncture as a complementary approach to enhance pain management in the ED setting. (An Adaptive Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial of Emergency Department Acupuncture for Acute Musculoskeletal Pain Management. Ann Emerg Med. 2024 Oct;84(4):337-350).

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38795078/