Jaseng Hospital of Korean Medicine: "Efficacy and Safety of Motion Style Acupuncture Therapy Proven for Acute Cervical Pain"

A study has found that "Motion Style Acupuncture Therapy (MSAT)," a treatment that combines acupuncture with movement, is effective in relieving pain in patients with acute cervical pain (neck pain).

Medical staff are performing motion acupuncture therapy on a patient with acute neck pain. Jaseng Hospital of Korean Medicine

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Jaseng Hospital of Korean Medicine announced on March 24 that a research team led by Lee Yoonjae, Deputy Director of the Spine and Joint Research Institute, published the results of a multicenter, randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the clinical efficacy and safety of motion style acupuncture therapy for patients with acute cervical pain in the SCI(E)-level international journal "Chinese Medicine."

Motion style acupuncture therapy is a treatment in which a Korean medicine doctor inserts acupuncture needles into the affected area when pain and related functional disabilities occur, then uses the hand or another part of the body to guide the patient through passive or active movements, with the goal of enhancing the effects of acupuncture and improving pain.

According to the research team, while acupuncture is actively used in clinical practice for acute cervical pain as an alternative to drug therapy, which may have side effects, there has been a lack of research in this area. This multicenter clinical study is the first to confirm the effects of motion style acupuncture therapy for acute cervical pain.

The study was conducted at four Jaseng Hospital of Korean Medicine locations (Gangnam, Daejeon, Bucheon, and Haeundae), targeting 128 patients aged 19 to 70 who had suffered from acute cervical pain for less than four weeks.

Patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to either the motion acupuncture group (64 people) or the conventional acupuncture group (64 people). Both groups received an average of 5.5 treatments over two weeks, at a frequency of two to three times per week. In addition, the research team set the visual analog scale (VAS; 0-100) for neck pain during movement as the primary evaluation index and analyzed neck disability index (NDI; 0-50) scores as well. Higher VAS and NDI scores indicate greater pain and more daily functional disability, respectively.

The results showed that the motion acupuncture group experienced a significantly greater reduction in neck pain compared to the conventional acupuncture group. At week 3, the average VAS for pain during movement was 38.23 points in the conventional acupuncture group and 22.99 points in the motion acupuncture group, a difference of 15.24 points between the two groups. This significant difference was maintained at week 9, with a 14.23-point gap. For pain at rest, the VAS at week 3 was 18.13 points in the motion acupuncture group versus 30.54 points in the conventional group, a difference of 12.42 points, and at week 9, the difference was 12.10 points, again favoring the motion acupuncture group for greater pain reduction.

The motion acupuncture group also showed superiority in functional recovery indices. In particular, for neck pain NDI at week 3, the motion acupuncture group recorded 14.45 points, while the conventional group scored 21.94 points, a difference of 7.49 points. At week 9, the motion acupuncture group still led with a difference of 4.81 points.

In the "survival analysis," which examined the time point at which pain was reduced to half or less, the median time for the motion acupuncture group was 12 days, indicating a recovery speed more than four times faster than the 58 days recorded for the conventional group. Adverse events were mild in both groups, demonstrating not only the functional improvement achieved by motion style acupuncture therapy but also its safety as a treatment method.

Lee Yoonjae, Deputy Director of the Spine and Joint Research Institute at Jaseng Hospital of Korean Medicine, emphasized, "It is necessary to verify through large-scale, long-term follow-up studies in the future whether motion style acupuncture therapy can also help prevent the chronicity of cervical pain."

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