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AMBULATORY ANESTHESIA

Perioperative Auricular Electroacupuncture Has No Effect on Pain and Analgesic Consumption After Third Molar Tooth Extraction

Andrea Michalek-Sauberer, MD^*, Harald Heinzl, PhD, Sabine M. Sator-Katzenschlager, MD^*, Gabriel Monov, MD, Erich Knolle, MD^*, and Hans Georg Kress, MD, PhD^*

From the *Department of Anesthesiology and General Intensive Care Medicine (B); Core Unit for Medical Statistics and Informatics; and Bernhard Gottlieb Department of Oral Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Andrea Michalek-Sauberer, MD, Department of Anesthesiology and General Intensive Care Medicine (B), Medical University of Vienna, Vienna General Hospital, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. Address e-mail to andrea.michalek-sauberer{at}meduniwien.ac.at.

BACKGROUND: Auricular acupuncture (AA) has been shown to alleviate acute and chronic pain. We investigated the effects of auricular electroacupuncture (AE) on pain and analgesic drug consumption in the first 48 h after unilateral mandibular third molar tooth extraction under local anesthesia in a prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 149 patients.

METHODS: Patients received either AA with electrical stimulation (AE, n = 76) or without (AA, n = 37) electrical stimulation at an alternating frequency of 2/100 Hz or a sham AE with metal plates instead of needles and no electrical stimulation, no-needle (NN, n = 36) at the AA points 1 (tooth), 55 (Shen men) and 84 (mouth) during the entire study period. Regularly rated pain intensity (five-point verbal rating scale), consumption of acetaminophen 500 mg tablets and additional rescue medication with mefenamic acid 500 mg were assessed.

RESULTS: The median fraction of time when pain was rated as moderate or worse (upper and lower quartile): AE: 33% (12%, 64%), AA: 22% (6%, 56%), NN: 30% (7%, 53%) did not differ significantly among the treatment groups. There were no significant differences in mean number of acetaminophen 500 mg tablets (range): AE: 5.2 (0–12), AA: 4.6 (0–11), NN: 5.4 (0–10) or percentage of patients requiring additional mefenamic acid: AE: 19%, AA: 18%, NN: 19%.

CONCLUSION: We conclude that neither AE nor AA alone reduce either pain intensity or analgesic consumption in a molar tooth extraction model of acute pain.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				Y. Sun, T. J. Gan, J. W. Dubose, and A. S. Habib Acupuncture and related techniques for postoperative pain: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials Br. J. Anaesth., August 1, 2008; 101(2): 151 - 160. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Anesthesia & Analgesia® is published for the International Anesthesia Research Society® by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins with the assistance of Stanford University Libraries' HighWire Press®. Copyright 2006 by the International Anesthesia Research Society. Online ISSN: 1526-7598   Print ISSN: 0003-2999