Local hospital promotes acupuncture anesthesia further afield

A local hospital has become the nation's largest clinical training center on acupuncture anesthesia and is promoting its multidisciplinary format on the practice nationwide, experts told a meeting on acupuncture alliance in the Yangtze River Delta region.

Some expatriate hospitals have also contacted the Shanghai Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine to invite its experts to perform academic exchanges on the special technique in their countries, its officials said.

Yueyang Hospital, which ranks No.1 for acupuncture in the nation, is an international acupuncture training center and a national TCM clinical research center, which focuses on boosting the inheritance, development, and innovation of traditional TCM techniques.

"Yueyang Hospital is the birthplace of many leading acupuncture experts," said Dr Zhou Jia, president of Yueyang Hospital. "Instead of inheriting these ancestor's theories, we are always thinking about innovation and internationalization of our TCM skills. So we developed acupuncture anesthesia, which is a combination of Western and TCM medicine.

"In fact, acupuncture anesthesia is not a new concept. But it is mainly a theory in TCM books, with few clinical practices. We then made use of our background as Western medicine practitioners to introduce a more practical operation into the traditional theory of acupuncture anesthesia and made it effective for clinical use."

Acupuncture anesthesia combines pressure on certain acupoints with the administration of anesthesia. It allows doctors to perform surgery without conducting tracheal intubation, and uses a much smaller dose of anesthesia. The tubeless practice helps patients better endure surgery, suffer less trauma, have fewer complications related to anesthesia, and make a quicker recovery.

Currently, acupuncture anesthesia has been widely adopted in heart and lung surgery at Yueyang Hospital, which is trying to expand the method to more surgeries involving the neck, breast, bone joints, and stomach, and also for gastroscopy and colonoscopy exams.

"Acupuncture anesthesia is a good example of Chinese-created technique," Zhou said. "We will establish a nationwide alliance to promote its practice,carry out standard training, enhance clinical and basic research, and set up clinical guidance to regulate and boost he development of acupuncture anesthesia, which has been recognized by the World Health Organization."