Age =18 Years Clinical Trial
Official title:
Acupuncture Versus Intravenous Morphine in the Management of Acute Pain in Emergency Department (ED)
Pain is the most common reason that patients present to an emergency department (ED) and is
often inadequately managed. Evidence suggests that acupuncture is effective for pain relief,
yet it is rarely practiced in the ED.
In 1998, a United States National Institute of Health Consensus Conference Panel reviewed the
status of acupuncture and concluded that: "There is sufficient evidence of acupuncture's
value to expand its use into conventional medicine and to encourage further studies of its
physiology and clinical value." Similarly, in 2002, the World Health Organisation (WHO)
stated that acupuncture is a safe, simple and convenient therapy and that its effectiveness
as analgesia has been established in controlled clinical studies.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, it has been shown that acupuncture analgesia in the
treatment of chronic pain is comparable to morphine and that its better safety profile and
lack of dependence makes it the preferred method of choice for these conditions.
There are very few clinical trials of acupuncture for acute pain to inform clinical practice;
that's why we have the idea to do this study in our emergency department.
The objective is to evaluate the efficacy and the tolerance of acupuncture compared to
intravenous morphine in the management of acute pain.
The results will also identify the impact that acupuncture treatment may have upon health
resource utilization in the ED setting.
It is a randomized, prospective, controlled, conducted into emergency department. Acupuncture
will be applied according to Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of
Acupuncture (STRICTA).
In all included we recorded at baseline :
Age, sex, job, comorbidity, hour of beginning of pain. Injury nature and severity assessed by
the Injury Severity Score (ISS) Mechanism of the injury and radiologic findings. VAPS :
0-100%
;