Case Series Report on the Effect of Hand Acupuncture - Focusing on 29 Patients with Headache -

Objectives : The purpose of 29 case series is to report the possibility that a hand acupuncture is effective in relieving headache. Methods : After approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), I analyzed 29 cases medical records of outpatients with headache, who visited ${\bigcirc}{\bigcirc}$ oriental medical hospital from December 2008 to December 2010, who have taken a hand acupuncture's treatment without other intervention, and who were diagnosed with one disease of international classification of headache disease second version (ICHD-2). The data was analyzed with Wilcoxon signed rank test to determine whether a hand acupuncture's treatment differed between before and after treatment's Visual Analogue Scale(VAS) according to types of headache and syndrome differentiation. Statistics program was used SPSS 18.0. Differences were considered significant at P<0.05. Results : The VAS of patients with headache was reduced after treatment of hand acupuncture from $6.57{\pm}2.04$ to $2.90{\pm}2.04$ for overall headache, from $6.32{\pm}2.05$ to $2.47{\pm}2.03$ for tension-type headache(P<0.001), from $7.10{\pm}2.18$ to $3.70{\pm}1.77$ for migraine(P<0.001), and from $6.00{\pm}1.41$ to $2.50{\pm}3.54$ for headache unspecified. A hand acupuncture produced a decrease in VAS of both ascendant hyperactivity of liver yang(P<0.001) and phlegm turbidity according to syndrome differentiation(P=0.002). No adverse event were encountered in any of the patients. Conclusions : It is suggested that a hand acupuncture may be effective in relieving headache, and could be applicable to first choice of acupuncture treatment for headache.