Electro-acupuncture for chronic pelvic pain: two interesting cases

ABSTRACT

Neuropathic pain is a common cause of chronic pelvic pain. Its resistance to treatment, often challenges patient's cooperation to prolonged and sometimes interventional schemes and necessitates constant search for alternative or complementary interventions. In this case series, one elderly male patient who presented with persistent chronic pelvic pain after multiple abdominal operations did not respond to conventional medical treatment and acupuncture and requested discontinuation of treatment. Electroacupuncture was applied as a last resort therapy and proved very effective in reducing pelvic pain; it permitted significant reduction in anti-depressant medication doses. A second case study refers to a young female patient who developed chronic pelvic pain after giving birth to a child. Various treatments proved unsuccessful in alleviation her pain. She eventually responded to electro-acupuncture at multiple trigger points in the abdominal wall