The future of post-heart surgery care – getting patients out of their hospital beds and back home safely and quickly – may soon involve traditional Eastern medicine techniques such as acupuncture.
At Northwestern University’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, acupuncturist Ania Grimone inserts needles into one of her regular patients.
“Chinese medicine has a 3,500-year history, so it has a lot of clinical experience on how to deal with heart problems,” says acupuncturist Ania Grimone.
Grimone is part of a medical team that recently published a first-of-its-kind study showing that acupuncture may help patients recover after heart surgery — more than 2 million people around the world have heart surgery each year, according to the National Institutes of Health.
In the clinical trial, 100 volunteers undergoing open-heart valve surgery were divided into a control group and an acupuncture group.
The ACU-Heart Half received an average of four acupuncture treatments, each lasting approximately 45 minutes.
The acupuncturist inserted needles into precise spots on the inside of the arm, wrist, and ear.
Patients reported less nausea, pain and anxiety, typical symptoms following heart surgery.
The time spent in intensive care units was also reduced.
One of the most interesting findings was the reduction in common problems such as tachycardia and arrhythmia in patients after surgery.
“Postoperative atrial fibrillation, an arrhythmia that occurs in about one-third of open-heart surgery patients, can increase hospital stays and complications such as stroke,” said lead researcher and cardiac psychologist Dr. Kim Feingold.
The acupuncture group saw a nearly 60% reduction in the incidence of atrial fibrillation after surgery and a reduction in the need for medications to treat atrial fibrillation when patients were discharged from the hospital.
Fiengord told Scripps News the next step is a larger study with more patients to see whether acupuncture after open-heart surgery can shorten the overall length of hospital stay.
But the evidence so far of its potential to help patients warms her heart.
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