A Case Study of 20 Patients with Lateral Epicondylitis of the Elbow by Using Hwachim (Burning Acupuncture Therapy) and Sweet Bee Venom Pharmacopuncture

Abstract

Objectives:This study was performed to estimate the effectiveness of burning acupuncture therapy (Hwachim) and sweet bee venom pharmacopuncture (S-BV pharmacopuncture) in treating lateral epicondylitis of elbow.Methods:We selected 33 patients at first, but 13 patients were excluded due to unclear medical records. Finally, a total of 20 patients who had received treatment from January 2012 to December 2013 were included in this study; all 20 patients had undergone Hwachim for the treatment of lateral epicondylitis of elbow, and 19 of the 20 had been treated with S-BV pharmacopuncture (Korea Pharmacopuncture Institute, KPI) and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) as an ancillary treatment method. The degrees of pain of the 20 patients were evaluated by using the visual analogue scale (VAS) score at their first and final visits. The Wilcoxon signed rank test and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used to compare the VAS scores statistically.Results:The VAS score had decreased significantly from 10.00 ± 0.00 to 4.00 ± 2.47 (P = 0.000) by the end of the treatment. No significant changes were observed based on the number of treatments (P = 0.246), the age of the patients (P = 0.810), the duration of the illness (P = 0.705), and the location of the lesion (P = 0.076).Conclusion:This study suggests Hwachim and S-BV pharmacopuncture are very effective for treating lateral epicondylitis of the elbow.

A Systematic Review of Acupuncture for Tennis Elbow

“…1). There were 9 RCTs [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] and 18 [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] case reports included in the review. The main characteristics of these studies was presented in tables (Tables 2 and 3).…”

“…The highest frequency of treatment sessions in case reports was 57 [38], and the lowest was 1 session [35,42]. The number of treatment sessions were varied amongst the 18 case reports [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

“…In the case reports, the most used intervention was acupuncture which was used in 7 cases [25,27,33,36,38,40,42], followed by bee venom acupuncture which was used in 6 studies [28,29,33,37,38,40], burning acupuncture was used in 4 studies [29,31,32,34], and acupotomy [35], and thread embedding acupuncture were used in 1 study each [26]. In addition, there were many case reports in which combination therapy was used.…”

“…All 18 case reports showed the effectiveness of treatment, but only 5 cases showed statistical significance. The interventions conducted in each study were combination therapies including acupuncture [25], the combination therapy of burning acupuncture and bee venom pharmacopuncture [29], electroacupuncture associated with eccentric exercise (EccEx) and stretching [30], and the combination therapy of bee venom pharmacopuncture and a single acupuncture treatment [40].…”

Bienengift in der Komplementärmedizin

“…In einer Fallstudie wurden 20 Patienten mit lateraler Epikondylitis [15] Die Fa. Alk-Abelló GmbH besitzt einige zugelassene Allergene zur subkutanen Immuntherapie wie ALK-depot SQ 801 Bienengift 10 000 SG-U / ml, 100 SQ-U / ml, 100 000 SQ-U / ml, 1000 SQ-U / ml sowie lypholisiertes Bienengift.…”