Is Acupuncture Safe?
It is natural to have concerns about the safety of any medical technique or healing method. Without knowing how safe acupuncture is there is no way to make an informed decision about whether or not to seek treatment through this method. The answer to the question “Is acupuncture safe?” can be broken down into three separate areas- risk of infection, risk of malpractice, and risk of side-effects. Each of these will be explored in this article.
Infection From Acupuncture
Acupuncture in the modern industrialized world is almost always performed with sterile, single-use, disposable acupuncture needles. To further reduce the risk of infection acupuncturists in most jurisdictions are mandated to pass a “Clean Needle Technique” course. In this course acupuncturists are taught how to prevent contamination of the needles or acupuncture sites that could lead to infection. When practiced this way, infections due to acupuncture are extremely rare. In my informal polls of acupuncturists I have not found anyone who knew of a single case of infection!
Still, infections at the needle site can and do happen, especially in people who have a compromised immune system. To avoid the risk of infections ask your acupuncturist if they always use sterile, single-use, disposable acupuncture needles. You should also ask if they have passed a “Clean Needle Technique” course. If your acupuncturist complies with both of these best-practices then your risk for this kind of infection should be very low.
Acupuncture Malpractice
Malpractice can happen in any healing modality. While acupuncture enjoys very low rates of malpractice compared to conventional “western medicine”, mistakes can and do happen. There are a few incidents such as punctured organs and collapsed lungs each year. According to wrongdiagnosis.com in the years 1990 through 2003 only 0.04% of acupuncture practitioners had a malpractice claim against them. Compare that to the 13.5% of dentists and 68.6% of physicians that had a malpractice claim against them during the same time period and the safety of acupuncture can be put into proper perspective.
Side-effects of Acupuncture
Since acupuncture affects the body in a holistic way, “side-effects” the way one might normally think of them, are rare. Sometimes a patient will come in for treatment of one condition and have another seemingly unrelated condition clear up first. There are also times when the symptoms a patient is experiencing gets worse for a few days after an acupuncture treatment. Most often the symptoms will start to improve in a few days, particularly when acupuncture treatment is first started. Still, this can be alarming to someone who is unprepared for this possibility.
The healing process the body goes through is unique from individual to individual. It is hard to predict exactly how the body will react to treatment. Both of the above cases can be seen as an indication that the acupuncture treatment is working. It is important to give your body adequate time to go through its healing process. Your acupuncturist will want to know about any changes happening in your body as you go through a course of treatment.
« previous post
No More Mood Swings With Magno...Ever experienced feeling so happy one moment and then the next instant the complete opposi...
next post »
Why Was Acupuncture Invented?To understand why and how acupuncture came into being, you have to look back at the histor...
Comments are closed.
No trackbacks yet.
No post with similar tags yet.