Analgesic Effect of Acupuncture for Patients With Rib Fractures

Summary

Traumatic rib fractures are common, resulting from significant forces impacting on the chest, and are associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Acute pain management in inpatients with traumatic rib fractures has been highly emphasized by practitioners. Inappropriate analgesia may cause respiratory complications, including pneumonia, atelectasis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and prolonged hospital stay. These may be prevented or reduced by good analgesic therapy. This study is aimed to investigate the analgesic effect of acupuncture on traumatic rib fractures.

Conditions

• Rib Fractures
• Acute Pain
• Analgesia

Interventions

PROCEDURE

Traditional acupuncture (TA)

Procedure: real acupuncture. Eight disposable, single use, sterilized, stainless steel needles are inserted at each session, and the bilateral LI4 (Hegu), SJ6 (Zhigou), ST36 (Zusanli) and GB34 (Yanglingquan) are used for acupuncture treatment. The acupuncture needles are to be inserted to a depth of 15-35 mm. All needles are rotated manually at least once at each session to elicit needle sensation (De qi). The needle retention time is 15 min.

PROCEDURE

Laser acupuncture (LA)

Procedure: laser acupuncture. Participants allocated to the LA group receive laser acupuncture treatment at the same acupoints used in acupuncture group. The laser acupuncture therapy will be performed with the gallium aluminum arsenide LaserPen (maximal power, 150 mW; wavelength, 810 nm; area of probe, 0.03 cm2; power density, 5 W/cm2; pulsed wave; and Bahr frequencies \[B1: 599.5 Hz, B2: 1199 Hz, B3: 2398 Hz, B4: 4776 Hz, B5: 9552 Hz, B6: 19,104 Hz, and B7: 38,208 Hz\]; RJ-Laser, Reimers \& Janssen GmbH, Waldkirch, Germany). The laser will be applied to each point for 5 seconds, which delivered 0.375 J of energy at each of the acupoints: LI4 (Hegu, B3), SJ6 (Zhigou, B3), ST36 (Zusanli, B2) and GB34 (Yanglingquan, B2).

PROCEDURE

Sham laser acupuncture (SLA)

Procedure: sham laser acupuncture. Subjects in the control group receive sham laser acupuncture treatment without any laser output. The acupuncture points, application duration, and total number of treatments were similar to those in the LA group.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Chang Gung Memorial Hospital

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Chun-Ting Liu, MD · Chang Gung Memorial Hospital

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

20 Years

Max Age

100 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-03-01

Primary Completion

2020-02-28

Completion

2020-12-31

Countries

• Taiwan

Study Locations