SCI(E)-level international academic journals
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A study found that psychological sequelae such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia that appear after traffic accidents are significantly alleviated by acupuncture treatment. Acupuncture is a treatment that injects natural ingredients extracted from herbal medicine into acupuncture, and has been mainly used for musculoskeletal diseases, but the study confirmed that it has shown a clear improvement in the psychological stress of traffic accident patients.
On the 26th, a research team led by Shin Shin Yong-chul, a professor at Jaseng Oriental Hospital’s Spinal Joint Research Institute and Pusan National University’s Graduate School of Oriental Medicine, announced that they recently published this in the SCI (E) international journal Integrative Medicine Research IF 3.0).
According to the research team, traffic accidents often cause psychological problems due to accident shock, even if the trauma is not large. If these aftereffects persist for a long time, the overall quality of life may decrease due to obstacles to daily return as well as professional activities. Currently, professional counseling or anti-anxiety antidepressant drugs are mainly prescribed, but psychotherapy is time-consuming and expensive, and drugs can cause various side effects such as dizziness, gastrointestinal disorders, and insomnia, raising interest in alternative treatments.
However, most of the existing acupuncture studies are focused on musculoskeletal pain, so scientific evidence for alleviating psychological symptoms after the accident was insufficient. In response, a research team led by an oriental doctor at Son Ja-yeon Jaseng Oriental Hospital’s Spinal Joint Research Institute and Shin Yong-cheol, a professor at Pusan National University, conducted a joint study to verify the effectiveness of acupuncture treatment on psychological stress in traffic accident patients.
The study was conducted on 50 patients who were admitted to Haeundae Jaseng Oriental Medicine Hospital within 3 days after a traffic accident from November 2023 to April 2024. All participating patients showed moderate or higher psychological stress status based on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale HADS.
Shock stress and insomnia index also improve
All patients received Korean combined treatment for musculoskeletal symptoms such as acupuncture, herbal acupuncture, and Chuna therapy. Of these, 25 people in the acupuncture treatment group received additional acupuncture treatment to relieve stress once a day from the second day of hospitalization to the day before discharge. The prescribed acupuncture points were Hwangryeon Sea Poison Tang, Zahager, and Kamisaemul Ansintang, and were injected into various acupuncture points such as chest, solar plexus, danjeon, and ankle depending on the patient’s constitution and symptoms.
The research team used the HADS total score (HADS-T) as the main evaluation index and analyzed the National Rating Scale NRS, which checks the degree of feeling of anxiety depression pain, in addition to anxiety (HADS-A) and depression (HADS-D).
As a result, HADS-T in the acupuncture treatment group decreased by 60% from 15.84 points at the time of admission to 6.82 points at the time of discharge. On the other hand, the general oriental medicine treatment group decreased by only about 40% from 15.04 points to 9.11. In the NRS evaluation, the improvement effect of acupuncture was greater. Anxiety NRS in the acupuncture treatment group was reduced to less than half from 5.64 to 2.23 before treatment and depression NRS from 5.28 to 2.17. The NRS reduction rate in the general oriental medicine treatment group was about 40%, about 10 percentage points lower than that in the herbal acupuncture group.
Other evaluation items such as shock stress index, insomnia index, and quality of life (QoL) also showed a higher improvement effect in the acupuncture treatment group. In particular, the degree of improvement was maintained in follow-up tests conducted 15 days and two months after discharge, and the herbal acupuncture treatment group recovered faster than the general oriental treatment group. No adverse reactions were reported during the treatment process, so safety was also confirmed.
“Psychological stress such as anxiety and depression after a traffic accident can lead to slow improvement over time and a long-term deterioration of quality of life if left unattended,” said Dr. Sohn. “We will continue various studies to establish an integrated treatment system that considers not only physical recovery but also mental recovery of traffic accident patients.”
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