TITLE:
Labor Pain Treated with Acupuncture or Acupressure
AUTHORS:
Oroma B. Nwanodi
KEYWORDS:
Acupuncture, Acupressure, Cesarean Delivery, Complementary Therapies, Electro-Acupuncture, Labor Pain Treatment, Manual Acupuncture, Non-Pharmacological Labor Pain Management, Obstetrics
JOURNAL NAME:
Chinese Medicine,
Vol.7 No.4,
December
1,
2016
ABSTRACT: Opioid-dependent women have an 80% to 90% unintended pregnancy rate, almost double the overall unintended pregnancy rate: 40% globally and 51% in north America. The prescription drug abuse milieu increases the possibility opioid abusing laboring patients. In 2012, neonatal abstinence syndrome occurred in 5.8 per 1000 hospital births. Non-pharmacological labor pain management (NPLPM) is especially recommended for laboring patients with a history of substance abuse. Therefore, literature review was performed to elucidate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture, noninvasive electro-acupuncture (EA), and acupressure in labor pain management. Compared to standard intrapartum controls, bilateral EA at JiaJin or Sanyinjiao significantly reduced visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores 30-minutes post intervention (p