Background: Experienced traumatologists often diagnose human structure abnormality by pulse diagnosis technique. However, pulse diagnosis techniques in traumatology literature only focused on predicting prognosis of traumatic diseases. This study investigated pre-test and post-test data of low back pain patient’s wrist pulse in tsun-kou area. And the result was expected to find correlation between low back pain and pulse in tsun-kou area.
Method: Patients with acute/subacute low back pain in Traditional Chinese medicine traumatology department in Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital were enrolled. They receive acupuncture and traumatology treatment. The pre-test and post-test data of pulse in tsun-kou area from pulse sensing machine and pain indexes of patients were collected within 2 hours before and after treatment.
Results: 19 people were included and 13 full information was obtained (7 males and 6 females, with an average age of 50.2 years). After treatment,pain scores assessed by visual analogue scale (VAS) decreased significantly (p<0.001). Patient’s "optimal pulse spectra" at right Chi position exhibited significant difference in obtained pressure before and after treatment (p<0.01).Other locations of tsun-kou pulse exhibited no significant difference in obtained pressured. And improvement of VAS score has positively moderate correlation with change of obtained pressure of left Guan "optimal pulse spectra" (p<0.05).Therefore, it indicates that physiological structure of the lower back corrected by traumatology and acupuncture treatment can be reflected in right Chi position, and the pain can be reflected in left Guan position.
Conclusions: This study confirms the correlation between low back pain and pulse in tsun-kou area, and the value of pulse diagnosis technique in diagnosing traumatology diseases and spine abnormality.
Keywords:low back pain, acupuncture, traumatology treatment, pulse diagnosis,pulse sensing machine
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