Acupunct Electrother Res. 1988 ; 13(1): 25-30.

Acupuncture anesthesia in thymectomy on myasthenia gravis patients.

Dong ST, Nguyen VT, Nguyen VT, Vu TA, Pham MH.

Thoracic Surgery Department, Ha-Son-Binh Hospital, Hadong, Vietnam.

Thymectomy is often successful as treatment for the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis. One complication of the operation on such patients is respiratory difficulty especially post-operatively, due to interference with the already disturbed transmission of signals along damaged nerve-endings. Acupuncture anesthesia offers a solution to that problem. In this series of 90 patients, the results of operation under conventional general anesthesia were compared with those under acupuncture anesthesia. It was found that patients in the latter group suffered fewer complications.