Clinical noteIsolated Median Sensory Neuropathy After Acupuncture
Section snippets
Case Description
A 47-year-old left-handed man presented with a 25-day history of pain and numbness in his left thumb and index finger after undergoing acupuncture treatment. He was a professional photographer and mentioned that he had visited a clinician who practiced oriental medicine and underwent acupuncture treatment prior to visiting our clinic. He had suffered from discomfort in the right lower abdomen without any definite diagnosis for several years. He tried every possible medical treatment, but his
Discussion
The clinical application of acupuncture has been increasing because it seems an effective treatment with low risk.6, 7 However, there is definitely a possibility of complications, including pneumothorax, injury to the central nervous system, infections, and drowsiness.8 Regarding peripheral nerve injuries, only 2 cases have been reported in the literature, both of which were caused by needle breakage.3 A fragment of broken needle caused injury of the median nerve in 1 case,4 and peroneal nerve
Conclusions
This case highlights the possibility of a focal peripheral nerve lesion resulting from acupuncture, possibly caused by herbal medicine coating the needle. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of peripheral nerve injury caused by herbal acupuncture without any unexpected problems such as a broken acupuncture needle.
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2019, Journal of Manipulative and Physiological TherapeuticsCitation Excerpt :In the field of rehabilitation, dry needling (DN) and acupuncture approaches have been applied to the pronator teres to treat musculoskeletal and nervous system disorders.5-9 However, complications have been reported during DN and acupuncture procedures, and MN and radial nerve neuropathies have been reported during the use of deep DN and acupuncture in the forearm muscles.10-13 The use of ultrasound could minimize the risk of MN injury, which is considered an adverse effect of DN and acupuncture.14-16
Acupuncture: Does it alleviate pain and are there serious risks? A review of reviews
2011, PainCitation Excerpt :In areas where multiple reviews were available, a substantial degree of contradiction emerged. Ninety-five cases were found and grouped into 3 main categories: infection (Table 2) [1,2,8,12,15,17,20,42,44,55,57,59,62,66,69,74,77,95,96,100,104,106,118,120,122,126,132,143,150–155], trauma (Table 3) [6,9–11,13,18,22,24,41,45,49–51,53,54,56,60,70,78,79,87,99,103,105,108,109,111,112,114–117,124,127,136,137,140–142,162], and other adverse effects (Table 4) [3–5,40,47,48,58,61,97,98,131,138,156]. Five patients died.
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Supported by a research fund from Dankook University.
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.