REHABILITATION TREATMENT BY EAR SQUEEZE WITH WAIST EXERCISE FOR ACUTE LOW BACK PAIN

HONG-XIN JIAO, JIAN-HUA HU, WEN-QING LU

Department of Orthopaedics, The Second People’s Hospital of Kunshan, Kunshan 215300, China

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the treatment effects of auricular point acupressure with waist exercise in the rehabilita- tion of patients with simple acute lower-back pain.

Methods: Acupressure of semen coicis at the junction point of the antihelical crura of each auricular with waist exercise was employed to treat patients with acute lower-back pain between the period of 2006 to 2014. The visual analogue scale (VAS) on pain was used to evaluate the effects of the treatment.

Results: This study included 210 patients (82 males/128 females, mean age: 47.5 years, disease duration: four hours to three weeks). After the first office-visit treatments, acute pain and the limited movement of all patients (n=210) were significantly relieved. Most of these cases recovered and returned to work after one week of self-treatment. Among the 193 cases that were followed-up, low-back pain disappeared after one, two and three weeks of treatments in 110 (57%), 60 (31%) and 14 (7.3%) cases, respectively. Furthermore, nine (4.7%) cases became chronic low-back pain, in which acute low-back pain occurred within two weeks of their first office-visit and treatment.

Conclusion: Auricular point acupressure with waist exercise is an effective treatment for acute low-back pain rehabilitation. Early treatment ascertains better rehabilitative effects. This treatment would most likely replace the dislocated spine joints and stimu- late endogenous anesthetic effects.