Acupuncture for the Treatment of Sweating Associated with Malignancy

Abstract

Acupuncture was used to treat a 60–year old woman with unexplained sweating associated with inoperable lung cancer that prevented her from sharing a bed with her husband. Other measures failed to improve her sweating, but she responded well to a course of acupuncture allowing her to continue sharing the marital bed.

Critical review of complementary therapies in haemato‐oncology

“…Improvements following acupuncture for patients with pharmacologically refractory vasomotor symptoms have been reported in two case series, a series of women with breast cancer 22 and a series of men with prostatic carcinoma 23 . A single case report documents the successful use of acupuncture to treat unexplained sweating related to an inoperable lung cancer 24 …”

“…23 A single case report documents the successful use of acupuncture to treat unexplained sweating related to an inoperable lung cancer. 24 No evidence of improvement in immune function or survival following treatment with acupuncture was found. One uncontrolled study of cancer patients evaluated T-cell and natural killer (NK)-cell activity before and after a course of five electro-acupuncture sessions, but was unable to detect any significant change.…”

Acupuncture for Primary Hyperhidrosis: Case Series

“…6 Excess sweating in a patient with breast cancer that presented as a paraneoplastic phenomenon was treated using SP6, ST36, LR3 and KI3 acupuncture points. 7 The amount of sweating can be measured using various methods. For axillary sweating it is best to measure the area of wetness in shirts and t-shirts.…”