Evidence-Based Study on Acupressure in Pain Syndromes

Abstract

Pain is the major complaint in the primary medical care clinics and is the most commonly reported health problem that a large part of general population suffers from. Aside from occidental medications, people look for acupressure to alleviate the discomfort. Our study, aiming to investigate efficacy of acupressure in pain syndromes, includes three parts. Part 1: Standard pain outcome measures. Chinese versions of international standard pain measuring tools for low back pain are developed with proofs of reliability, validity, and adequacy and ability in distinguishing pain intensity and characters in Taiwanese people; Part 2: Studies to investigate the efficacy of acupressure in relieving pains in low back compared with that of physical therapy and in head with that of muscle relaxant in adding to analgesic medication are conducted by evidence-based medicine study designs. The results reveal that acupressure is a statistically significant efficacious pain relieving modality; and Part 3: Economic evaluations on acupressure, compared with physical therapy, are performed by cost estimates, cost-effectiveness analyses and cost-benefit analyses. While analyzing the cost-benefit, the “willingness to pay” approach is adopted for different percentage reductions for low back pain from a population who seek acupressure for pain relieving. Results show that acupressure is of lower costs and with cost effective and beneficial in pain syndromes.