Acupuncture for Kids – How Safe is it?
Picture a child under several needle punctures without any form of sedation. Would you consider it, if your child were ill and not responding to conventional medical treatment? A surprising number of parents have.
Although the action of taking your child to see a trained acupuncturist seem unnatural for some parents, for others it seemed the only course of remedy. Their willingness to have their children undergo this traditional Chinese practice have enabled research studies to be conducted, which has since provided evidence for its acceptance into Western culture.
Acupuncture is an alternative treatment modality that reportedly offers curative benefits to patients for specific types of ailments through insertion and manipulation of thin needles in the body.
After careful review of studies spanning 60 years, Dr. Sunita Vohra, professor in the Department of Pediatrics and her colleagues of the University of Alberta in Edmonton assert acupuncture “ is a safe treatment for children.” The study was recently published in the Medical Journal, which now joins other peer reviewed evidence-based standards.
The recurring theme throughout the study, however, is one that strongly touts the treatment safe, only when administered by trained practitioners. Based on review of 37 studies in over half a century Dr. Vohra decisively concludes the procedure is safe for children.
In the findings, 1,422 children were successfully treated with few exceptions of mild adverse effects dominating the reports. These adverse effects included pain, bruising, bleeding and worsening of symptoms occurring in 168 of the 1,422 children in the studies.
Severe effects were also reported. Twenty-five (25) serious events occurred in children with needle acupuncture; the majority of cases resulted in thumb deformity, usually after 1 year of treatment.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati