Acupuncture-Drug Balanced Anesthesia

Abstract

In this chapter, the clinical and experimental studies on acupuncture-drug balanced anesthesia will be reviewed. The history of acupuncture anesthesia in China started in 1958. After two decades of clinical practice and experimental investigation, the combination of acupuncture (usually electro-acupuncture, EA) with drugs has been successfully used to improve anesthesia for surgical operations and pain treatment since the 1980s, and this technique is now known as the acupuncture-drug balanced anesthesia in China. It is more advantageous to use acupuncture combined with selected drugs to produce anesthesia, because acupuncture could regulate the functions of multiple organs of the body in addition to analgesia. Moreover, the underlying mechanism has been elucidated by investigating the potentiation effects of some commonly used drugs on acupuncture analgesia, in various animal models. Substantial evidence has shown that the combination of acupuncture with these drugs promotes the release of endogenous opioid peptides (EOP). In addition, these drugs potentiate EA-induced expression of EOP gene. Furthermore, several lines of evidence show that EA induces an increase in both binding affinity and density of the opioid receptors, while the combined use of acupuncture with drugs can further enhance the EA effect. Currently, clinical and bench studies on acupuncture-drug balanced anesthesia are still in progress to improve the clinical efficacy and to better understand the working mechanisms. We expect that new discoveries through the translational research will bring more benefits to patients.