Acupuncture Trial In ED

Type: Union News Subject: Nursing Issues
11 August 2009

Acupuncture will be trialled in emergency departments in Victorian Hospitals as a means of lowering pain levels in patients.

The National Health and Medical Research Council has granted more than $400,000 for a three-year clinical trial.

The Age newspaper reported that during the trial 400 people will receive drug therapy, acupuncture or both to treat acute migraine, back pain and ankle injuries.

A pilot program follows a pilot project run at a busy Victorian public hospital, the Northern Hospital in Epping, which showed promising results in managing patients’ pain and nausea.

The emergency department acupuncture trials will employ traditional Chinese medicine practitioners to work in emergency – a first for the Western world, lead researcher Professor Marc Cohen from the School of Complementary Medicine at RMIT, told The Age.

He said that unlike other alternative therapies, there is increasing sound scientific evidence for the use of acupuncture.

‘It is very well accepted that pain is treated very badly in emergency departments, yet pain is the most common reason for people presenting to emergency,’ he said.

The pain levels of patients will be monitored every hour until they leave hospital, and for several days afterwards, to see which type of treatment was most effective.

The first medical acupuncture clinic linked to a public hospital in NSW opened in 2006 at Balmain Hospital.

At the Balmain acupuncture clinic patients are treated for a range of ailments including pain conditions such as arthritis, sports injuries, mechanical back pain and non-pain conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, depression and sleep disturbances.

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