Treatment of fibromylgia with laser acupuncture

• Main Authors: Shu-Wen Weng, 翁淑雯
• Other Authors: 李德茂
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/45975894628213887991

碩士 === 中國醫藥大學 === 針灸研究所碩士班 === 95 === Fibromyalgia (FM) is a common chronic pain condition in the rheumatologic diseases. It is female predominant, characterized by widespread pain, accompanied by sleep disturbance and irritable bowel syndrome. There was no consistently effective medical treatments approved, it is common for patients to search for complementary and alternative treatment such as exercise program, behavioral intervention and acupuncture. In Taiwan, studies of FM is few, however, many patients have tried acupuncture to alleviate chronic pain. Since its difficult to blind patients by way sham of acupuncture. We choose laser acupuncture to deal the patients in this study. In《Nanjing難經》, it was stated that the eight extra meridians are interlated with the twelve regular meridians and perform the functions of dominating, connecting and adjusting the twelve regular meridians. Acupoints were based on traditional literature and used the Eight Confluent acupoints . This will be a randomized, controlled trial to include laser acupuncture, and sham procedure. Fifteen FM patients were recruited from the China Medical Hospital. The patients were diagnosed according to the ACR criteria of 1990 by experienced physicians. They were randomized to laser acupuncture group(n=8) and shame laser acupuncture group(n=7) , and treated for three times a week for three weeks. There were no significant improvement in Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) scores between two groups. Fibromyalgia impact questionnaire(FIQ) total scores and subscale of pain and fatigue scored were significant improved in laser acupuncture group compared with shame group at 3 weeks (p<0.05). We found that laser acupuncture was effective at reducing FM symptoms in this outcome study.