↓ Skip to main content

A pilot randomized controlled trial of acupuncture at the Si Guan Xue for cancer pain

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, June 2017
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (62nd percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (73rd percentile)

Mentioned by

twitter
4 X users
facebook
2 Facebook pages

Citations

dimensions_citation
18 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
93 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
A pilot randomized controlled trial of acupuncture at the Si Guan Xue for cancer pain
Published in
BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, June 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12906-017-1838-5
Pubmed ID
Authors

To-Yi Lam, Li-Ming Lu, Wai-Man Ling, Li-Zhu Lin

Abstract

Pain is a common symptom in cancer patients. Acupuncture is a suggested treatment for a wide range of clinical conditions, usually for its beneficial effects on pain control. Si guan xue (the four points) have been widely used in clinical practice, and has shown that it is highly effective, effective in obtaining qi, shows strong acupuncture stimulation, and is simple to manipulate and safe to use. Therefore, the aim of this study is to test the protocol and safety of acupuncture at the si guan xue in the management of cancer pain. This is a single-blind, randomized controlled pilot trial. 42 patients with moderate to severe cancer pain were randomly assigned to three different arms with seven sessions of treatment; that is, treatment arm 1 (the si guan xue arm, n = 14), treatment arm 2 (the si guan xue plus commonly used acupoints arm, n = 14) and the control arm (the commonly used acupoints arm n = 14). Primary outcomes included acupuncture relieving cancer pain, and patients' subjective improvement as measured by the Patient Global Impression of Change (PGIC). Secondary outcomes included the scores of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) and Karnofsky's Performance Status (KPS). The analysis showed that the cancer pain reduction in treatment arm 2 was most prominent on day 5 when compared with the control arm (P<0.05). There was no difference in the scores of PGIC, EORTC QLQ-C30 or KPS among the three groups (P>0.05). Furthermore, no serious adverse events were observed. These results indicate that acupuncture at the si guan xue plus commonly used acupoints tends to be effective in reducing cancer pain. However, the sample size was small, and a future multi-centre study with a larger sample size is warranted. ChiCTR-IOR-15007471 (Retroactively registered on 28 NOV 2015).

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 4 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 93 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 93 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 13 14%
Student > Master 7 8%
Student > Postgraduate 6 6%
Researcher 5 5%
Other 4 4%
Other 9 10%
Unknown 49 53%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 19 20%
Nursing and Health Professions 11 12%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 4 4%
Psychology 2 2%
Unspecified 2 2%
Other 8 9%
Unknown 47 51%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 March 2021.
All research outputs
#7,285,335
of 22,982,639 outputs
Outputs from BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
#1,191
of 3,641 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#116,074
of 315,536 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
#31
of 125 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,982,639 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 67th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,641 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.6. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 66% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 315,536 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 62% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 125 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 73% of its contemporaries.