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submissions to | Home > News > Acupuncture, Massage Helpful After Cancer Surgery |
Acupuncture, massage helpful after cancer surgery |
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By Amy Norton NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A combination of acupuncture and massage may help ease pain and depression symptoms after cancer surgery, a new study suggests. Acupuncture has been shown in many studies to ease pain, and there's growing evidence that it helps quell post-surgery nausea. Massage, meanwhile, has been shown in certain studies to aid cancer patients' anxiety. Until now, however, no studies have tried combining the two therapies for people undergoing cancer surgery -- a physically and emotionally difficult process. The new study included 138 patients who were randomly assigned to have either standard post-operative care or standard care plus acupuncture and massage for 2 days following their cancer surgery. Overall, the study found, patients who received the therapies had a steeper decline in pain over 3 days, as well as fewer symptoms of depression. The findings are published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. "We can say that adding acupuncture and massage definitely helped," said lead study author Dr. Wolf E. Mehling, an assistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of California San Francisco. It's possible, he told Reuters Health, that the patients in the acupuncture/massage group did better simply because they received extra attention, and not because of a specific effect of the therapies.
On the other hand, there's evidence from other research that
acupuncture and massage have relevant physiological effects. For example,
Mehling noted, animal research has found that massage can increase blood levels
of oxytocin, a hormone with pain- and anxiety-relieving actions; increased
oxytocin levels might counter stress-hormone elevations around the time surgery,
Mehling explained. |
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