A review published in Pain Medicine found acupuncture can be effectively deployed in emergency departments to help manage acute pain and avoid or reduce the use opioids.
More than half of all chronic opioid use begins in the acute pain care setting (Pain Med 2022;23[9]:1582-1612).
The review built upon a 2018 Academic Consortium White Paper outlining nonpharmacologic interventions for pain management and included 22 systematic reviews: 17 with meta-analyses (SRM) of acupuncture in the acute pain