Nausea Control by Needling at Acupuncture Point Neiguan (PC6) During an Intraoral Impression-Taking Procedure

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture point PC6 (Neiguan) in controlling nausea during intraoral impression taking. This study was conducted in Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil. The sample consisted of 33 adult volunteers with nausea, who were randomly divided into control and study groups, and treated with nonpenetrating sham acupuncture and real acupuncture, respectively, at acupoint PC6. The two groups had two maxillary impressions taken, one prior to acupuncture and the other after acupuncture. The nausea assessment was made using the visual analog scale, Gagging Severity Index (GSI), and Gagging Prevention Index. Volunteers' expectation that nausea would be reduced through acupuncture was also assessed. For statistical analysis, we used the t test and the Spearman correlation (p < 0.05). When assessed by Gagging Severity Index/Gagging Prevention Index, nausea was reduced in the real acupuncture group (p < 0.01). In the visual analog scale assessment, similar reductions of nausea were noted in both groups (p > 0.05). No correlation existed between the expected and the actual reductions in nausea. Our results indicate that acupoint PC6 was effective for controlling nausea during the maxillary impression-taking procedure. Patients' expectation did not influence the results.

Conventional Vs Digital Impressions: Acceptability, Treatment Comfort and Stress Among Young Orthodontic Patients

“…Gagging problems are not uncommon in daily dental practice and the exact prevalence is unknown. This can have an important impact on treatment plan and dental treatment outcome [ 1 ].…”

Is acupuncturing effective in controlling the gag reflex during dental procedures? A review of literature

“…Also, they indicated that PC-6 point was effective for controlling gaging reflex during preparing maxillary impression procedure. [ 13 ] The PC-6 point was again observed by Rahshenas et al . [ 19 ] They examined the acupuncturing of that point for eliminating the induced gaging during stimulation of the soft palate and the sides of the tongue by medical wood sticks.…”

“…From the gathered articles, 8 of them[ 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ] met the inclusion criteria in which 6 of them were indexed on PubMed database. [ 12 13 14 15 16 17 ] Nevertheless, 2 of mentioned studies were case-series. [ 16 17 ] The three of them used the pericardium-6 (PC-6) point and two of them used Conception vessel 24 (CV-24) acupuncturing points.…”

Exploring alternative methods of gag reflex control Part 2: Acupuncture

“…Statistical analysis has demonstrated that acupuncture to this point significantly decreased gagging compared to sham acupuncture to the same point. 11,19 In a randomised double-blind study acupuncture to P-6 improved visual analogue scores (VAS) by 48% (p = 0.0015) in addition to improving GSI and GPI scores by 32% (p = 0.0016). 20 Similar results have been established by other researchers, acupuncture to P-6 exhibited an average mean score of 0.92 (p <0.001) compared to pseudo-acupuncture to the same point which showed a mean score of 1.37 (p = 0.157).…”