2.1 Pain
The effectiveness of acupuncture analgesia has already been
established in controlled clinical studies. As mentioned
previously, acupuncture analgesia works better than a placebo
for most kinds of pain, and its effective rate in the treatment of
chronic pain is comparable with that of morphine. In addition,
numerous laboratory studies have provided further evidence of
the efficacy of acupuncture’s analgesic action as well as an
explanation of the mechanism involved. In fact, the excellent
analgesic effects of acupuncture have stimulated research on
pain.
Because of the side-effects of long-term drug therapy for pain
and the risks of dependence, acupuncture analgesia can be
regarded as the method of choice for treating many chronically
painful conditions.
The analgesic effect of acupuncture has also been reported for
the relief of eye pain due to subconjunctival injection (14), local
pain after extubation in children (15), and pain in
thromboangiitis obliterans (16).
2.1.1 Head and face
The use of acupuncture for treating chronic pain of the head
and face has been studied extensively. For tension headache,
migraine and other kinds of headache due to a variety of
causes, acupuncture has performed favourably in trials
comparing it with standard therapy, sham acupuncture, or mock
transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) (17–27).
The results suggest that acupuncture could play a significant
role in treating such conditions.
Chronic facial pain, including craniomandibular disorders of
muscular origin, also responds well to acupuncture treatments
(28–31). The effect of acupuncture is comparable with that of
stomatognathic treatments for temporomandibular joint pain and dysfunction. Acupuncture may be useful as complementary
therapy for this condition, as the two treatments probably have
a different basis of action (2, 32).
sources : Acupuncture: review and analysis of controlled clinical trials
