Acupuncture effects on pain reduction after open cholecystectomy in recovery stage

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that is associated with actual or potential damage to the tissues or resulting from it. Human have always tried to find a means to heal their physical and psychological suffering and relieve their pain. In this study, the effect of acupuncture on pain relief in patients undergoing open cholecystectomy was studied
Material and In this double-blind clinical trial, a total of 40 patients were randomly selected into intervention and control groups. In the intervention group, after an intubation, and before leaving from the operating room, acupuncture was performed by one anesthetist who had passed acupuncture course or familiar with principles of acupuncture and allowed to perform this activity, at two points LI4 and LV3 on both sides, a total of four points were pinpointed manually. At the end of the operation, the needles were removed before the extubation and the patient's be alert. In the control group, before entering the recovery room and when the patient was not alert, in the same areas of the puncture in intervention group, only dressed and the patient dispatched to the recovery room. Patient's pain score was evaluated by the recovery technicians who were unaware of the type of intervention and by the VAS and recorded in the questionnaire. Data were collected by SPSS software version 16 and analyzed statistically. The significance level in this study was considered to be less than 0.05.
In the intervention and control groups, the mean age of participants was 58.8±5.8 and 57.11±9.49 years, the mean score of pain in recovery room was 5.11±1.45 and 5.50±1.50, induction anesthesia using Propofol 55% and 60%, the percentage of using bullous retainer was 66.7% and 33.3%, and the correlation coefficient between age and pain score was 0.138 and 0.238. Respectively. There was no significant difference in pain intensity between the intervention and control groups (P> 0.05). But the percentage of use of bullous retainer in the control group was significantly higher than the intervention group (P = 0.027)
The use of acupuncture in patients undergoing open cholecystectomy does not have a significant effect on reducing their pain intensity in recovery room.