The immediate effects of various treatment styles

Abstract

[Objective]In clinical practice, it is important that patients experience symptomatic improvement or at least gain a certain level of satisfaction early on during a series of treatments. Most patients decide whether or not to return to the clinic based on these factors. At our school, students are trained in protocols from three different treatment styles:modern acupuncture, meridian acupuncture (based on classic acupuncture) and traditional Chinese medicine. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of each style, such as the presence of immediate effects and the types of sensations perceived by patients.
[Methods]Questionnaires were given before and after treatment to 177 patients who came to the clinic associated with our teacher training course for acupuncture, moxibustion and massage. We received valid responses from 169 patients. The practitioners surveyed were second-year students who had treated the surveyed patients 1.2 times on average prior to answering the questionnaire. Before treatment, patients were asked about their main complaints and symptoms, and afterward about changes in their symptoms, satisfaction level and other sensations. The resulting data was subjected to statistical analysis.
[Results]The style chosen by most practitioners was modern acupuncture, followed by meridian acupuncture, and then traditional Chinese acupuncture. Most lower back, leg and joint pain was treated with modern acupuncture protocols, while internal disorders were more often treated with meridian acupuncture or traditional Chinese acupuncture. All three styles were able to alleviate symptoms and achieve patient satisfaction with no statisticallysignificant differences among the three groups.
[Discussion]The results demonstrated that training practitioners in these three styles for one year helped them achieve positive and immediate effects. While there are many different styles of acupuncture, in actual clinical practice, the style is less important than how much a patient feels the effect of the treatment.
[Conclusion]All three styles, modern acupuncture, meridian acupuncture and traditional Chinese acupuncture, were able to alleviate symptoms and achieve patient satisfaction with no statistically significant differences among them.