Needle Manipulations in South Korea

Needle Manipulations in South Korea

In clinical practice, acupuncture manipulation is highly individualized for each practitioner. In order to establish a standard for acupuncture manipulation, it is important to understand completely the manifestations of acupuncture manipulation in the actual clinic. To examine motion patterns during acupuncture manipulation, the study generated a fitted model of practitioners' motion patterns and evaluated their consistencies in acupuncture manipulation. Using a motion sensor, real-time motion data from eight experienced practitioners were obtained while they conducted acupuncture manipulation using their own techniques. The study calculated the average amplitude and duration of a sampled motion unit for each practitioner and, after normalization, a true regression curve of motion patterns for each practitioner using a generalized additive mixed modeling (GAMM) was generated. Significant differences in rotation amplitude and duration in motion samples among practitioners were observed. GAMM showed marked variations in average regression curves of motion patterns among practitioners but there was strong consistency in motion parameters for individual practitioners. The fitted regression model showed that the true regression curve accounted for an average of 50.2% of variance in the motion pattern for each practitioner. The findings suggest that there is great inter-individual variability between practitioners, but remarkable intra-individual consistency within each practitioner.

Source: Seo Y, Lee IS, Jung WM, Ryu HS, Lim J, Ryu YH, Kang JW, Chae Y. Motion Patterns in Acupuncture Needle Manipulation. Acupunct Med. 2014 Jun 17.