Auricular Acupressure Treatment In Maintenance Hemodialysis Patients With Thirst, Disease Research

BackgroundThe number of patients receiving HD has grown enormously recent years. With technics improved in hemodialysis, the life quality of these patients has been rised in large scale. Then thirst and xerostomia has become outstanding .Because most of the patients are anuric or oliguric, controlling drinking is important to diminish complications. The former is contradictory to the latter, which decreases the quality of life. We have not elucidated the mechanism of thirst or find any effective method to relieve thirst and xerostomia. In view of this, we find researching into thirst mechanism and its therapy a topic full of significance.Ear acupoint therapy, originated from Chinese traditional medicine, combined with holographic theory,is said to be model of combination of TCM with Western medicine.ObjectiveThis investigation is to find out whether ear acupoint therapy is effective in relieving the thirst degree and improve the quality of HD patients.MethodsWe add ear acupoint therapy to conventional therapy of HD patients, and compare the result of xerostomia questionnaire score (XQ), MAP, KT/V and percent of daily increase weight gain (IWG%) et al., pre and after ear acupoint therapy, to evaluate the effect.ResultPro-HD MAP, serum sodium concentration, plasma osmotic pressure and Kt/v does not change significantly throughout the period of ear acupoint therapy treatment (p>0.05). XQ scores (41.73±17.53)in HD patients is much higher than scores (37.3±24.2)patients after intensity-modulated radiotherapy of head-and-neck cancer and decreases significantly (p<0.05) every week during period of ear acupoint therapy. IWG% seems to decrease, but the change, during this 4 weeks, has no significance.(p>0.05) We compare the XQ scores of patient in state of Xue Yu with the scores out of Xue Yu and find the difference without significance.We search into the relationship of IWG% with the XQ scores and serum sodium concentration or plasma osmotic pressure with the XQ scores, but find it significant in former not latter .To our surprise, some patients get much better in tinnitus, insomnia or constipation.ConclusionThirst and xerostomia could lead to superabundant IWG and ear acupoint therapy is effective in relieve the distress, with the longer course, the better therapeutic efficacy.