EFECTO ANALGÉSICO DEL ACUTOMO VS ACUPUNTURA EN PACIENTES CON CEFALEA TENSIONAL DE ORIGEN CERVICAL

Abstract

Tension headache with involvement of the cervical muscles is a common disorder in the population. It has seen an increase in the number of ambulatory patients with this condition (33%). It affects between 2 and 3% of adults, resulting in labor absenteeism, reason that has been forced to seek therapies that aid in the treatment such as acupuncture and acutome medicine. The acutome is a stainless steel instrument with a flat blade, the direction of the edge of the blade is parallel to the handle. It is used in chronic alterations that directly affect the soft tissue; it was created by Dr. Zhu Hanzhang over 30 years ago. Tensional headache according to traditional Chinese medicine depends on the presentation, localization and clinical symptoms can be distinguished according to the distribution and course of acupuncture channels. General objective: evaluate the analgesic effect of acupuncture vs. acutome in patients with tensional headaches of cervical origin. Methodology: the study was conducted at the acupuncture clinic of the national school of medicine and homeopathy. There were two randomly formed groups of 20 patients each one age patients was from 18 to 65, all of them diagnosed with tensional headache with involvement of cervical muscles. The first group pain was initially evaluated with visual analog scale (eva), acutomo technique was applied on a single occasion, pain was evaluated 30 minutes later with EVA, and this group was cited two times a week during five weeks in order to perform subsequent assessments of pain. Second group. Pain was evaluated with EVA. It was placed in ventral position, asepsis was performed in the area with alcohol and swab and the acupuncture points were applied: Houxi (id3) bilateral sides with sedation in rotation technique, Fengchi (vb20) bilateral sides with sedation in rotation technique, Tianzhu (v10) bilateral sides, with sedation in rotation technique, Baihui (dm20) direction against the channel. Up to the Qi. Each session had duration 20 minutes. Six sessions were applied, twice a week. In each session a pain evaluation was performed with EVA. Results: the acupuncture group reported an average improvement in accordance with EVA assessments at the end of treatment of 92.8% while acutomo group reported an average improvement according to evaluations with a EVA 94.4% with a single session, both groups with p <0.05. Conclusion: the use of acutomo technique and the use of acupuncture have good pain relief in patients with tensional headaches of cervical origin. Acutome was lightly better than acupuncture, having in mind that for patients in the acutomo group, the technique was applied only once, while acupuncture group required six sessions.