Interventional Study to Evaluate Efficacy of Acupuncture for Treating Sciatica Pain

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Low back pain has a profound impact bothdirectly and indirectly on individuals. It is estimated that 60%to 80% of any population will experience low back pain atsome point in their lives. There are number of causes for lowback pain and Sciatica is one of them. Study aimed to assessthe efficacy of Acupuncture for the management of Sciaticapain.Material and Methods: This study was conducted among 200patients attending the Outdoor Patient department at Dr D.N.Kotnis Health and Education Center. With each subject a priorinformed and written consent was obtained. A predesigned andpretested proforma was used to collect the socio demographicprofile. Severity of Pain was measured with the help of LikertScale whereas the reading on Likert scale was taken at thetime of first visit and last visit of patients for comparison ofpain. Data was first entered into MS excel sheet and then wasexported to SPSS version 20.0 for appropriate analysis.Results: Wilcoxon signed rank test was applied to determinethe efficacy of the treatment on reducing the pain, further itwas observed that the effect of the treatment was statisticallysignificant (p<0.001)Conclusion: Acupuncture provides effective relief fromSciatica pain. However initiation of treatment at young ageprovides quick response and healing by reducing suffering ofsciatica pain.