Using Take Home Acupuncture for Pain Control After C-Section Delivery

Cesarean deliveries, or c-sections, can be a necessary part of a birth plan, but the pain and recovery time always feel too long and hard when all you want to do is enjoy time with your newborn. The standard treatment of opioid analgesics for pain have left patients still experiencing high levels of postoperative pain and recovering slowly; so much so that a systematic review of studies found that none of the 13 included studies reported adequate pain relief. In other words, standard care is failing these patients.

A new study is showing how Acupuncture can help - especially in the form of take home Acupuncture. If that sounds familiar, Healing Arts pioneered doing this at the start of the pandemic as Virtual Acupuncture by using mini stick-on acupuncture needles. In the study in the journal Anesthesiology, patients were given semi-permanent acupuncture needles in select points for pain control and movement within an hour of their c-section. Results showed that acupuncture was safe and effective in reducing pain and accelerating mobilization of patients after giving birth.

How helpful was it? Of the patients in the control group, 83% were able to fully mobilize the day after the c-section. In the Acupuncture group, though, 98%, all but 1, were able to move by day 1. That is HUGE! Pain levels were significantly better and more patients were able to have their catheters removed on the first day.

The study author wrote: “With consideration for personnel and time expenditures, acupuncture can be recommended as routine, supplemental therapy for pain control in patients after elective cesarean delivery.”

Since publication Healing Arts has been reaching out to the local area hospitals to see if any would be interested in piloting this within their delivery wards. In the meantime, if you know you’re due for a c-section soon, let us know and we can put together a take home Acupuncture pack or help you put them in right before your procedure. Click the button below to reach out.

Study Link: Usichenko TI, Henkel BJ, Klausenitz C, et al. Effectiveness of Acupuncture for Pain Con