Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture as an analgesic during labor.
Design: A randomized, unblinded, controlled study.
Setting: A labor ward in a University Hospital.
Patients: Parturients at term.
Interventions: One group received acupuncture (N = 106); another did not (N = 92). A second control group (N = 92), drawn from the labor ward protocol, consisted of patients who met the eligibility criteria for the study and were matched to the no acupuncture group by parity, but who had not been offered the opportunity to take part. Outcome measure effectiveness of acupuncture was measured by the requirement for use of meperidine.
Results: Meperidine was given to 11% of the acupuncture group, 37% of the no acupuncture group (P < 0.0001), and 29% of the control group. The use of other analgesics was also lower in the acupuncture group. Patient satisfaction was high: 89 of 103 patients asked said they would want acupuncture during another labor.
Conclusions: Acupuncture during labor reduced the requirement for other painkillers and has high patient satisfaction in this randomized, unblinded, controlled study.
Acupuncture is widely used in the treatment of pain. There is growing interest in acupuncture as an alternative to other analgesics for labor pain. Acupuncture has been found to have some effect in three small, uncontrolled studies, 1-3 in a controlled study (which was, however, not randomized and where the controls were chosen from the labor ward protocol), 4 and in a study which was not randomized and where there is no description of how the patients or the untreated controls were chosen. 5 A Medline database search from 1965 did not retrieve any randomized controlled trials of acupuncture for labor pain.
Meperidine has for some time been one of the most widely used drugs for pain relief during labor, but there is some evidence that opioids are not very effective for pain control during labor. 6,7