Patricia Maria Coletto Freitas

Acupuntura e analgesia: aplicações clínicas e principais acupontos

Pain is a protective response of the body to harmful stimulus, which results in undesirable effects if not controlled. Analgesia can be achieved with the use of different types of drugs. However, these drugs can cause adverse effects according to species and patient physical condition. Acupuncture has been proved to be an effective analgesic adjuvant, by the capacity to decrease the amount of drug used for pain control, rarely contra-indicated. The aim of this paper was to review the physiological effects of acupuncture on pain mechanisms, and demonstrate the main acupoints used for animal analgesia. The search was done in electronic search database using key words, in 2008.

Eletroacupuntura no reparo do tendão calcanear comum em coelhos após enxertia com peritônio bovino

The effects of eletro-acupuncture (EA) were evaluated on clinical and histological aspects in 36 rabbits that had the acchiles tendon sectioned and grafted after 30 days using bovine peritoneum graft preserved in saturated salt solution. The animals were randomly distributed into three groups. They were stimulated by EA from the 2nd to the 11th post-operative day (S10 group), from the 11th to the 31st post-operative day (S20 group), and were not stimulated (C group). Then, the rabbits were distributed into three sub-groups and were observed for 11, 31, and 91 days. The rabbits from S10 and S20 groups presented decreased adhesions between graft and adjacent tissues. The rabbits from S10 group showed connective tissue at 31 days of the post-operative period. Intense graft neovascularization was observed in all animals stimulated by EA. Large amounts of connective tissue with organized and parallel to the tendon axis collagen fibers were detected on the day 91st in the S10 group animals. The early EA stimulation during the post-operative period stimulated the tendon healing with minimal inflammatory reaction.

Eletroacupuntura aplicada nas fases precoce e tardia da cicatrização do tendão calcanear comum de coelhos após reparo tardio com peritônio bovino conservado em solução supersaturada de sal: aspectos clínicos

In order to evaluate the use of eletroacupuncture (EA) on clinical and functional aspects, the Acchiles tendon of thirty-two rabbits was sectioned and after 30 days was grafted using salt supersatured - stored bovine peritoneum graft. Then, animals were distributed into three equally groups. They were stimulated by EA from the second to 11th post - operative day (S10 group), from 11th to 31th pos-operative day (S20 group), or were not stimulated (C group). Neither edema nor hyperemia were detected on S10 animals. There were no significant (P>0.05) differences between groups related to functional aspects. All rabbits were recovered until the 51th day of the post-operative period. The use of eletroacupuncture on acute Acchiles tendon healing avoided edema and hyperemia, but did not improve functional aspects.