Successful Integrative Medicine Assessment and Treatment of Chronic Pain Associated With Breast Surgery: A Report of 3 Cases.
Myung Kyu Chung, Patrick J LaRiccia
PMID 27782920WHAT IT FOUND
Three women with chronic neck or back pain reported immediate relief within minutes when their breast scars were injected with procaine or treated with ear acupuncture.
The authors note that because multiple treatments were given together, the specific effect of scar therapy alone cannot be confirmed.
Key findings
01All three patients experienced dramatic relief of neck or back pain within minutes of intradermal procaine injection into their surgical breast scars.
02The treatment protocol combined neural therapy with autonomic response testing, prolotherapy, ozone therapy, and various forms of acupuncture.
03The authors state it is impossible to determine the relative effectiveness of individual components due to the retrospective nature and multiple confounding variables.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study is a retrospective case series of only three patients, which is at the bottom of the research design hierarchy. Multiple treatments were administered simultaneously (neural therapy, prolotherapy, ozone, acupuncture), making it impossible to isolate which component caused the improvement. The assessment tool used, Autonomic Response Testing (ART), is a form of applied kinesiology, for which the authors acknowledge a recent negative experimental study exists. Outcomes were based on patient self-report and global impression of change, with no blinded assessment or standardized objective measures. Placebo effects cannot be ruled out, although the authors argue that prior failed treatments suggest these patients were not placebo responders.
Declared interests
No specific funding sources or conflicts of interest were declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the immediate pain relief as proof that scar injection works on its own. The patients received a complex combination of neural therapy, prolotherapy, ozone, and acupuncture, and the authors explicitly state that the contribution of any single component cannot be separated.