The largest percentage of patients receiving acupuncture treatment in Japan are those with chronic aches. Aches are major factors of QOL, and the pain-killing effect of acupuncture treatment has a large clinical significance. In the study, therefore, we expressed the QOL of the patients who received acupuncture treatment as scores using SF-36 and then examined the effect of acupuncture treatment on improving the QOL. Each score of SF-36 was rated from 0 to 100, where higher points represent better states of health.
The study was conducted on 60 patients who received acupuncture treatment in our facility from Oct. 2002 to Jan. 2003.
All scores before the start of treatment were low, and all score fell below the national standard value. Physical functions (PF), bodily pain (BP), and generally view of healthiness (GH) of the physical component summary (PCS) and vitality (VT) of mental component summary (MCS) showed particularly low scores relative to other scores. Comparison of scores before the start of treatment with those 1 month after the treatment revealed that BP among the eight sub-scales was improved significantly (p<0.05). In conclusion, these results suggest that receiving acupuncture treatment can contribute to improving a patient's QOL.