Ear Acupuncture May Benefit Patients with Penetrating Neck Wounds.....

Albuquerque, NM - Proponents of an ancient Chinese needle-based therapy are optimistic after the publication of a study looking into the use of ear acupuncture in patients with catastrophic penetrating neck wounds.

Traditional Chinese ear acupuncture, shown here curing a 25-year-old man with total organ failure from meningococcemia, may also slow death from exsanguination by several seconds

"We compared verum ear acupuncture plus usual care to usual care alone in severe knife wounds of the neck," lead researcher at University of New Mexico's Center for Studies, Dr. Flip Watkins, explained. "Though the subjects all died, there was an intriguing statistical trend towards slower death in the acupuncture group."

The study, which was published this week in Online Publishing Module #37,211 - Critical Care Acupuncture, involved a convenience sample of subjects with deep neck wounds who were randomized into treatment and usual care groups. According to Dr. Watkins, choosing the right acupuncture points to use was key to the methodological rigor of the study. "We focused on ancient Chinese texts dating back 5,000 years and determined that the ear acupuncture points corresponding to general neck health and also blood vessel integrity were the most likely to yield positive results."

Once the study concluded, a team of top statisticians set to work running the outcomes through a number of complicated algorithms using powerful graphing calculators on loan from the North Albuquerque Space Administration (NASA). What they found raised more questions than it answered, according to Chief of Complementary and Alternative Mathematics (CAM) Allyson Sanders. "Although none of the results were statistically significant, we've all got a really good feeling about this. More research is definitely needed."