Abstract
ABSTRACT BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Auriculotherapy is widely used to relieve painful conditions, therefore, allowing systematic reviews on the subject. However, they did not propose a unified bank of points of possible choice, their possible combinations or described the location of such points, thus making it the objective of this study. CONTENTS: The systematic review of revisions methodology (Overview) was chosen to achieve the proposed goal. The quality of such material was ascertained by the tool Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews, and the databases consulted were PEDro database, Pubmed, Scielo, and LILACS. The keywords and boolean index applied were: auriculotherapy AND pain; ear acupuncture AND pain, ear acupressure AND pain; auricular therapy and pain; auricular medicine AND pain. A total of 242 studies were found, but only six were systematic reviews in humans involving pain and auriculotherapy alone (without association with another technique). The methodological quality of the studies was high (8-10/11 Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews). There is variability in the neurophysiological explanation of action, many possible disorders that can be approached with auriculotherapy (acute, chronic, trauma, pre- and postoperative pain among others). Auriculotherapy showed to be promising in the remission of the pain, adjunct to the conventional treatment, low risk, cost, and easy administration. CONCLUSION: There are several ways of justifying its neurophysiological effects, and the most used points were ShenMen, the corresponding somatotopic region and the cavum conchae region (vagal stimulation). Auriculotherapy meets the needs of an immense possibility of painful musculoskeletal conditions, with favorable and promising results.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONSince 1978, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the insertion of complementary and alternative medicine
Since 1978, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the insertion of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) or integrative and complementary practices (ICP) in public health systems (e.g., Unified Health System, SUS)
This triggered the study of its neurophysiological basis of action and its recognition by WHO in 1987, which identifies it as an acupuncture microsystem capable of intervening in the body as a whole
Summary
Since 1978, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the insertion of complementary and alternative medicine. Theorizing that symptoms and diseases are projected in specific regions in the ear, as it is one of the few anatomical structures formed by endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm (three embryonic layers), which may hypothetically represent all parts of the body[8] This triggered the study of its neurophysiological basis of action and its recognition by WHO in 1987, which identifies it as an acupuncture microsystem capable of intervening in the body as a whole. This does not mean that all should be applied in a single session but rather selected according to the combinations already described and added to the painful area to be treated (Figure 3).
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