Acupuncture assisted anesthesia for nasal surgery as an example for integrative medicine in China

摘要

A group of German physicians was invited to accompany an acupuncture anesthesia in Beijing Guang'anmen Hospital. This case report presents the observations of this group during a bilateral turbinat outfracture operation of the nose with acupuncture assisted local anesthesia in a 38-year-old patient.Acupuncture as a treatment for pain might have been performed since more than 2000 years. However, the first published report of its implementation in the field of anesthesia dates back, to our knowledge, to 1958 in China [1]. In 1971 in JAMA the first witnessed acupuncture anesthesia was reported by western physicians [2]. One year later Prof. Bischko performed the first acupuncture anesthesia in Europe in Vienna during tonsil-lectomy [3]. Since then different clinical trials were performed with acupuncture in anesthesia usually in combination with local and/or intravenous anesthetics including general anesthesia.