Background: Pain is one of the most-frightening complications of cancer and disrupts quality of life. Cancerrelated pain can be caused by primary cancer itself, metastases that occur, and interventions to treat cancer. Almost all cancer-related pain is pain with moderate-to-severe intensity. Thus, cancer-related pain management often involves administration of opioid analgesics. However, administration of opioid analgesics can cause side-effects that cause new problems for these patients. Several studies have shown that acupuncture can reduce cancer-related pain and data show that acupuncture therapy is safe and can provide clinically meaningful improvements when used in conjunction with standard therapy. Case: A 72-year-old female patient had pain throughout her body since 1 month prior to before being admitted to the hospital. She was unable to sleep at night often cried because she was unable to stand the pain. This was reduced by morphine 3 • /day. Because of the drug's side-effects, she slept more often during the day, could not sleep at night, and was constipated. She also had breakthrough pain, on an average of 2-3 • /day. She had a history of malignancy in the pleura, liver, lungs, and cervix. There was an increase in some tumor markers. Her baseline numeric rating scale (NRS) assessment was 4 with an oral morphine slow-release tablet 3 • 15 mg/day. Acupuncture therapy was performed at Battlefield Acupuncture points of the right ear and body acupuncture points (LI 4, LI 11, ST 36, SP 6, and LR 3) was treated with 3-Hz continuous-wave electroacupuncture for 30 minutes at each session. During this therapy, there were reductions in pain (baseline NRS 4 became 2), need for morphine, morphine side-effects, and frequency of breakthrough pain. There were no significant side-effects due to acupuncture. Conclusions: Acupuncture is an effective and safe therapeutic option for reducing cancer pain with minimal side-effects. Acupuncture can enable a reduced need for narcotic analgesics.
Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that can induce cytokine storm. To this point, no specific drug has been effective for curing COVID-19. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the effects of a combination of acupuncture intervention and pharmacologic treatment in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with mild-moderate symptoms. Methods: A single-blinded randomized controlled clinical trial of hospitalized COVID-19 patients confirmed by RT-PCR examination with mild-moderate symptoms was conducted from August to September 2020. Participants were assigned to the treatment group (receiving pharmacologic treatment and manual acupuncture intervention) or the control group (receiving only pharmacologic treatment). Laboratory outcomes, including complete blood count, C-reactive protein (CRP) and ferritin levels, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), were measured before and after the intervention. For clinical outcomes, we evaluated the duration of the cough symptom. Results: We found that participants in the treatment group had a shorter duration of the cough symptom compared to the control group, and the difference was statistically significant. In the treatment group, we found an increase in the percentage of lymphocyte count and ESR, while in the control group, both parameters were decreased; however, the differences were not statistically significant. There was a decrease in the mean of CRP and ferritin levels in both groups, and the differences were not statistically significant. Conclusion: Our study has shown promising results for the effects of combined treatment of acupuncture and pharmacologic treatment on the duration of the cough symptom in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with mild-moderate symptoms. Further large-scale studies with rigorous design are needed to examine these preliminary results.
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