Acupuncture can have calming effect for cataract patients, study finds

Acupuncture may be helpful in reducing anxiety in patients undergoing cataract surgery with topical anesthesia, a study by Italian researchers suggests.

Luigi Gioia, MD, of Vita-Salute University of Milan, and colleagues evaluated acupuncture as an alternative to analgesic or sedative drugs in a prospective, randomized, double-blind study including 75 patients undergoing cataract surgery. In all cases, surgeons performed phacoemulsification after applying lidocaine 4% topical anesthesia.

The researchers conducted the study because "the risks related to the administration of sedative drugs may be too high for the procedure because of the medical conditions of some elderly patients," the authors said.

"Patients having cataract surgery are often elderly with a high incidence of cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease. Surgery-related anxiety combined with mydriatic eye drops can cause dangerous, acute elevations in blood pressure and heart rate," they said.

Dr. Gioia and colleagues randomly assigned patients to one of three groups. One group received no acupuncture, and another group received true acupuncture. A third group received sham acupuncture, in which needles were inserted into "areas traditionally devoid of an acupuncture effect," the authors said.

All patients reported their anxiety on a zero-to-100 point visual analog scale at baseline, 20 minutes after receiving true or sham acupuncture and 10 minutes after surgery, according to the study.

The researchers found that preoperative anxiety significantly increased from baseline among patients who received no acupuncture (P = .017) but significantly decreased among those treated with true acupuncture (P = .001). Patients who received sham acupuncture reported no significant change in anxiety from baseline, according to the study.

The average postoperative anxiety score differed significantly between the no-acupuncture patients (39 points) and true-acupuncture patients (19 points; P = .003), the authors noted.

"Given the positive effect we observed, we think an acupuncture approach is worthy of study in different medical and surgical settings characterized by procedural anxiety in awake patients," the authors said.

The study is published in the November issue of the Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.