Hanyang Med Rev.  2010 May;30(2):91-102. 10.7599/hmr.2010.30.2.91.

Evidence Based Acupuncture

• Park KH
• Yoo TW

• KMID: 2284496
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.7599/hmr.2010.30.2.91

Abstract

Acupuncture is an important portion of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine and has been applied widely, but understanding of acupuncture is not complete, a steady progress has been made in recent years with modernized techniques. The controversies of acupuncture should be defined through scientific evidence. There are a lot of problems for application of acupuncture in practice and research, such as, in the diagnosis, therapy and evaluation of acupuncture. We need standardized tools and scientific methods for diagnosis and treatment. It is an essential key to refine the effect of acupuncture and to prove the mechanisms. We should have basic concepts of acupuncture and apply it objectively for promotion of health and prevention of illness and treatment of disease as mentioned in Medical Acupuncture. Korean Hand Acupuncture Therapy (KHT) has many advantages for this purpose. It was found and developed in 1971 and since has been widely used in the world. KHT is easy to learn and to practice without side effect. The important concept of health in KHT is defined as the harmonized state of cerebral circulation which consists of anterior and posterior circulation. Disease and dysfunction result from imbalance of the anterior and posterior circulation. We present the basic concept of KHT and some studies to prove the mechanism of acupuncture using thermograph, transcranial Doppler and fMRI. We need a standard research protocol of acupuncture. KHT can be a good candidate for this purpose. KHT fulfills the requirements such as role, theory, diagnosis, treatment and evaluation and study.

Keyword

Complement Alternative Medicine (CAM); Korean Hand Acupuncture (KHT); Pulse Diagnosis; Acupuncture

MeSH Terms

Acupuncture
Acupuncture Therapy
Complementary Therapies
Hand
Health Promotion
Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Relationships between Eum (yin) and Yang; liver and gallbladder; heart and small intestine (pericaridium and triple warmer); spleen and stomach; lung and larger intestine; kidney and urinary bladder, and correlation of five elements of live, heart, spleen, lung and kidney or gallbladder, small intestine, stomach, large intestine and urinary bladder.

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  Fig. 2 This sheet shows Korean Hand Acupuncture Point and Micromeridian. There are 14 micromeridians and 403 acupuncture points on the hand (Adapted from reference 29).

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  Fig. 3 A) Corresponding experiment was performed with KHT pellet on A-28 and KHT acupuncture needle on A-24 and checked the change of temperature on the nose and neck in 2, 5, 7 and 10 minutes (above). B) Corresponding experiment was done with dry ice on A-8 and the change of temperature in the umbilicus was noted (below).

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  Fig. 4A The newly developed hold frame was used to check the blood flow velocities in several arteries continuously and simultaneously (Lee PH frame maker: Handok Medical Company).

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  Fig. 4B Four vessels were recorded at left vertebral (Ch 1), right vertebral (Ch 2), left carotid (Ch 3) and left radial artery (Ch4) using EME Transcranial Doppler to Park 0 0 diagnosed as migraine headache. The acupuncture treatment was done at E8 and I2 of Korean Hand Acupuncture Points.

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  Fig. 5 Axial MR image of the neck at the level of cervical 4th spine with fast low angle shot sequence. Flow-compensated image is shown in (A) and flow-encoding image is in (B). Regions of interest are manually drawn in each common carotid artery (long arrows) and the vertebral artery (short arrows) in both sides. Flow velocity and flow volume were calculated automatically by the MR machine soft ware.

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