engleski

Auricular acupuncture as effective pain relief after episiotomy: a randomized controlled pilot study

Abstract Purpose Previously, pain treatment following episiotomy has relied on non-steroid anti- infammatory drugs as analgesics, whose use during breastfeeding remains controversial due of their transfer to the child. Methods This was a pilot randomized parallel single-center study aiming to evaluate the efects of auricular acupuncture on pain relief after episiotomy. The primary outcome was reduction of pain intensity using visual analogue scale (VAS) scores during the frst three postpartum days. The patients were allocated to either of the groups by using a heads–tails binary result coin toss method and the allocation was not masked. The study was completed after including 60 healthy women that underwent mediolateral episiotomy performed during vaginal delivery, with 29 receiving acupuncture therapy and 31 not receiving acupuncture therapy for pain relief. Oral analgesic therapy was made available per request for all patients. Results This study showed that subjective experience of pain was signifcantly reduced in the acupuncture group on the second and third postpartum days (P=0.004, P=0.005, P=0.22). There were no adverse efects of acupuncture noted. Conclusions Our fndings confrm that auricular acupuncture therapy may be a valuable adjunct to analgesic therapy in patients undergoing episiotomy during vaginal delivery. The results prompt a question whether our current ‘best practice’ may yet be improved.

Auricular acupuncture · Episiotomy · Acupuncture · Pain relief · Analgesic therapy

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