Acupuncture

[Alexandra]

didnt helP

hI!

Just wanted to say: I did akupuncture for dry eyes. Didnt help at all!

[neil0502]

hI!

Just wanted to say: I did akupuncture for dry eyes. Didnt help at all!

I did about six sessions of electro-acupuncture about two years ago. Didn't help me, either.

BUT ... it didn't hurt anything, so ... I'd probably still recommend that people try it. Very little downside and--if it DOES help--I've never even HEARD of "adverse effects" associated with acupuncture.

[irish eyes]

Acupuncture for dry eye

Article content below:

May 1, 2006 (Fort Lauderdale) — A small pilot study suggests there might be a role for acupuncture in the treatment of dry eye, researchers reported here at the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.

Acupuncture has shown some benefit in the treatment of dry mouth, with its effect possibly being due to parasympathetic activation, according to Namtram Pham, MD, a physician and lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Consequently, it was thought acupuncture might also prove useful to patients with dry eye, and a study was launched to test its efficacy.

Dr. Pham presented a poster showing results from a study of 12 dry-eye patients randomized to either acupuncture or sham acupuncture treatment for the condition. The study was double-blinded.

One of her colleagues, Richard Niemtzow, MD, a radiation oncologist who also performs medical acupuncture, developed the dry-eye acupuncture protocol used in the study. Dr. Niemtzow was not available for comment.

All of the patients in the study presented with a clinical diagnosis of moderate to severe dry eye, although the causes of the problem varied. The patients who received real acupuncture treatment were an average age of 56.5 years, and 5 were women. Patients in the sham group were all women and had an average age of 53.1 years. Sham needles were placed in points on the shoulder known not to have treatment effects, while the treatment needles were placed at points according to the protocol. Otherwise, patients in the 2 groups were treated similarly.

Various measures for evaluating dry eye were performed at baseline, and again at 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month posttreatment.

The real acupuncture group had a significant improvement in patient-reported symptoms through use of the McMonnies questionnaire from baseline to 1 month postprocedure, a change that was statistically significant. The sham group had a minor worsening of reported symptoms.

Schirmer's tests, both with anesthesia and without, had minor but insignificant changes. "The Schirmer's did show an improvement but it was not statistically significant," Dr. Pham said.

Fluorescein tear break-up time showed a statistically significant improvement in the treatment group, increasing to about 3.7 seconds at 1 month (baseline time was an average of 6.6 seconds). The time stayed close to the baseline levels in the sham group. Similarly, the Rose Bengal score improved significantly in the patients receiving real acupuncture.

The study group was small, yet "even with this small group, we're getting some positive results in the treatment group compared to the sham group. We just need to do this with a larger number of patients to see if the other outcome measures are positive too," Dr. Pham said.

The study is of interest because it adds to the growing literature on acupuncture and eye disease, said Oliver Arend, MD, an ophthalmologist and professor of medicine at Augenzentrum Alsdorf, in Alsdorf, Germany. He was not involved in the study, but he has used acupuncture in patients with glaucoma and other retinal diseases.

"Acupuncture is not in the common treatment arsenal of ophthalmologists.... We definitely have to look in other disciplines or [at] other treatment modalities" for conditions such as dry eye, which can be difficult to treat, he said.