Advances in the prevention and treatment of postoperative delirium by acupuncture: A review

Abstract

Postoperative delirium is a common postoperative complication of neurocognitive dysfunction, especially in elderly surgical patients. Postoperative delirium not only damages patients’ recovery but also increases social costs. Therefore, its prevention and treatment has essential clinical and social significance. However, due to its intricate pathogenesis and limited pharmacological interventions, the effective prevention and treatment of postoperative delirium remains a thorny problem. As traditional acupuncture therapy has been shown to be an effective treatment in many neurological disorders, and in recent years, it has begun to be clinically used as an intervention for postoperative delirium. Although most clinical and animal studies confirm that multiple types of acupuncture interventions can alleviate or prevent postoperative delirium by relieving acute postoperative pain, reducing the consumption of anesthetics and analgesics, attenuating neuroinflammation and neuronal lesions, while more evidence-based medical evidence and clinical validation are needed for these encouraging effects.

Design and Performance Evaluation of a Home-Based Automatic Acupoint Identification and Treatment System

“…Numerous studies have shown the beneficial effects of acupuncture on the treatment of chronic pain, such as osteoarthritis, back pain, neck pain, headaches [14], and post-operative pain [15]. It is particularly noteworthy that acupuncture has a long-lasting and preventive effect [16][17][18][19]. A meta-analysis found that the effect of a single course of acupuncture therapy for patients with chronic pain did not appear to decrease significantly over 12 months [19].…”