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P02.125. Group acupuncture in an inpatient Joint Replacement Center provides innovative and effective intervention for post-operative pain relief
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine volume 12, Article number: P181 (2012)
Purpose
To examine the effects of a group model of acupuncture treatment on pain for joint replacement patients in an acute care setting.
Methods
In a large midwestern hospital, group physical therapy is provided to joint replacement patients. Orthopedic surgeons added acupuncture to the standard post-operative care for total knee and hip replacements provided through the Joint Replacement Center (JRC). Acupuncture is introduced in the pre-hospital class for surgery preparation and provided immediately after physical therapy on post-operative days one and two. Pre- and post-acupuncture treatment scores for pain are recorded in the electronic medical record. Mean differences in self-reported pain scores were analyzed using a two-tailed t-test.
Results
Between 1/1/2010 and 9/30/2010, 654 acupuncture treatments were provided to 427 unique patients. The sample included 252 women and 172 men ages 27 to 95 (mean 65.5; SD 12.4 (women) and SD 11.33 (men)). Average pre-treatment pain scores were 4.1, and average post-treatment scores were 2.3, demonstrating a 45.3% decrease in self-reported pain level (p<0.001).
Conclusion
Group acupuncture significantly decreased self-reported pain in a sample of post-operative joint replacement patients. The addition of acupuncture to the JRC model of delivery is a distinguishing characteristic of the services provided by this midwestern hospital that competes with other hospitals to provide this elective surgery, making it unique among the community options.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Miller, C., Weiss-Farnan, P., Hopperstad, B. et al. P02.125. Group acupuncture in an inpatient Joint Replacement Center provides innovative and effective intervention for post-operative pain relief. BMC Complement Altern Med 12 (Suppl 1), P181 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-12-S1-P181
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-12-S1-P181
Keywords
- Pain Score
- Physical Therapy
- Joint Replacement
- Acupuncture Treatment
- Group Acupuncture