Abstract
Acupuncture has been practiced successfully for thousands of years. The Western demand for other treatment methods to complement classical Western medicine has also been increasing over the last years. Since 1997 the Research Unit of Biomedical Engineering in Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine and the TCM Research Center Graz (http://tcm-graz.at) of Graz Medical University has been dealing with the demystification of acupuncture and examining, using noninvasive methods, how different stimulation modalities (manual needle acupuncture, laser needle acupuncture, electroacupuncture) affect central and peripheral functions. Laser acupuncture is also very important for evidence-based high-tech acupuncture research. One only needs to mention the treatment of children or of patients with needle phobia. The content of this book chapter includes the latest biomedical investigations of measuring the effects of acupuncture and contains some case studies to demonstrate the application of the concept in practice. In general, this chapter is a summary of some of the scientific results obtained at the Medical University of Graz and explains innovative methods like teleacupuncture which bridges acupuncture science and practice.
Keywords
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Acknowledgments
This book chapter was presented by the author in part as a lecture at the Shanghai Research Center for Acupuncture and Meridians in China on October 30, 2009.
The author thanks Ms. Lu Wang, MD LA, for performing acupuncture and Ms. Ingrid Gaischek, MSc, for her valuable support in data registration and analysis, both from Research Unit of Biomedical Engineering in Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine (http://litscher.info) and TCM Research Center Graz (http://tcm-graz.at), Medical University of Graz.
The investigations were supported partially by the Zukunftsfonds of the Styrian Government (project 4,071) and are part of the project “Bioengineering and clinical assessment of high-tech acupuncture—a Sino-Austrian research pilot study,” supported by the Austrian Federal Ministries of Science and Research and of Health and the Eurasia Pacific Uninet.
The following scientists delivered valuable contributions: Weibo Zhang (Beijing, China), Seung-Ho Yi (Seoul, Korea), Lu Wang (Graz, Austria), Tao Huang (Beijing, China), Ingrid Gaischek (Graz, Austria), Zheng Xie (Beijing, China, and Graz, Austria), and Jan Valentini (Beijing, China, and Graz, Austria). The author wishes to thank everyone sincerely.
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Litscher, G. (2013). Modernization of Acupuncture Using High-Tech Methods: Teleacupuncture Bridges Science and Practice. In: Xia, Y., Ding, G., Wu, GC. (eds) Current Research in Acupuncture. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3357-6_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3357-6_22
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