5. Acupuncture Anesthesia

Video Transcript: Have you heard of acupuncture anesthesia? Acupuncture anesthesia is applying electrical stimulation on the earlobe or somewhere on the body with several acupuncture needles, before and during surgical operation so that the patient will not feel surgical pain without anesthetics. Today, hundreds of thousands of surgeries have been successfully completed under acupuncture anesthesia in China. From 1965 to 1978, one thousand forty-eight cases of lung resections were performed under acupuncture anesthesia with excellent or good results. During the same period, three-thousand-five-hundred thirty-five cases of cesarean section were done under acupuncture anesthesia in Beijing. The successful rate was ninety-eight percent. According to a survey from ten largest hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai and Guiyang, China, acupuncture anesthesia was not as popular as back in the 1970s, but it is still applied selectively. At present, most common types under cases of acupuncture anesthesia are done in neurosurgeries because patients are operated under a conscious state, they can respond to surgeons' neurological check-ups during operations so that surgeons can make adjustments effectively to raise the successful rate of surgeries.

 

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