Abstract
Acupuncture is a core discipline in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and has been practised in China for centuries. In traditional acupuncture, pulse palpation is an important clinical diagnostic technique that guides practitioners in their treatment strategies as they evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment. This paper provides the findings of our investigation of acupuncture's effect on specific radial pulse spectral energies in 41 individuals with lower back pain (LBP), in response to a single acupuncture treatment delivered bilaterally at acupoints BL23, BL25, and BL40. Baseline assessments (vital signs and radial pulse diagnoses), primary outcome measures (radial pulse diagnoses), and secondary outcome measures (the Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) and fingertip-to-floor (FTF) tests) were performed at specified intervals before and after the intervention. Our study provides novel information about the effects of acupuncture on the radial pulse spectral energy in individuals with different types of LBP. Our findings suggest that the right Chi pulse is an effective indicator to assess the effects of acupuncture in individuals with fixed, distended, or sharp pain, whereas the left Guan pulse is a potentially useful diagnostic technique to determine acupuncture's effects in individuals with dull, aching pain. The acupoints BL23, BL25, and BL40 provide effective treatment for LBP. Study participants with dull, aching pain had a significant improvement in their lumbar ranges of motion, and their pain rating scores were markedly decreased after acupuncture treatment.
Highlights
Acupuncture is a core discipline in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and has been practised in China for centuries
Forty-five individuals were enrolled into the study, and three were subsequently excluded, as they were not able to undergo pulse assessments at the principal investigator’s discretion
We had designed our study to recruit the four types of lower back pain (LBP) patients, we found that only two types of pain were common in these study participants, i.e., fixed, distended, or sharp pain and dull, aching pain. us, to facilitate our statistical analysis, we categorised the data into two sets according to the type of pain described by the study participants, that is, Group 1 (LBP with fixed, distended, or sharp pain) and Group 2 (LBP with dull, aching pain)
Summary
Acupuncture is a core discipline in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and has been practised in China for centuries. Pulse palpation is an important clinical diagnostic technique that guides acupuncture practitioners in their treatment strategy and evaluates the effectiveness of the treatment [1]. TCM practitioners palpate the radial pulse with the second, third, and fourth fingers individually or simultaneously, at the three regions of each wrist. Each radial pulse profile has unique characteristics: depth, rate, waveform, density, and intensity. E ancient texts describe 28 common pulse profiles observed in clinical practice [4]. Ese are categorised by (1) depth: floating, sunken, Chi (proximal), or Cun (distal); (2) rate: slow, rapid, surging, or intermittent; (3) waveform: long, short, narrow, broad, thick, thin, rough, fine, firm, or gentle; and (4) intensity and density: converging, dispersing, extending, shortening, moving forward, moving backward, moving upward, or moving downward [3]. Jeon et al studied pulse wave variation during the menstrual cycle and reported that the pulse appeared to be either string-like or slippery and rapid [6]
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