Acupuncture in Lung Cancer- Research Review

I am Varsha Bondu, a senior at Vista del Lago High School, and I recently participated in a research project with four other high school students and two undergraduate students, studying the effects of acupuncture on the side effects of chemotherapy in patients with colon cancer. 

About Acupuncture:

Acupuncture is a form of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that inserts thin needles into specific areas of the body. It focuses on a holistic, long-term cure, and balance. It is often coupled with traditional herbs. There are also different forms of acupuncture such as electroacupuncture which still uses needles but has small electrodes attached to those needles. Acupressure, a massage form stimulating acupuncture points, is often used alongside acupuncture. 

Writing Process:

When we first started researching, we kept our topic broad, focusing on the side effects of chemotherapy, we researched articles from scholarly journals such as Pubmed pertaining to Acupuncture and Colon Cancer. As we compiled a list of over 55 articles, we noticed that there were many Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) that studied how acupuncture particularly helps alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy and other treatment methods in patients with colon cancer, but there weren’t many meta-analysis papers written studying this subject, so we decided to further explore this area. Now, once our topic was finalized, we created inclusion and exclusion criteria for the types of articles we wanted to include. Under the inclusion criteria, we had case studies and RCTs from medical journals and databases. Under the exclusion criteria, we included unspecific articles that generalized either acupuncture or colon cancer and blogs. Then, we filtered out our 55 articles based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, narrowing our articles down to 14. With those 14 articles, we synthesized our findings into our discussion and results section. We found that acupuncture reduces symptoms of chemotherapy such as back pain, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), or feeling of numbness, blurred vision, reduced motor function, and ringing in the ears, in colon cancer patients. It also decreases gastrointestinal motility and improves mental symptoms that may arise from chemotherapy. The other sections in our article included the abstract, which gave a brief overview of our article, an introduction to acupuncture and colon cancer, methods, documenting our process, conclusion, and references. Our research article is currently in publication. 

Results:

Overall, our results showed that acupuncture did provide a significant benefit to individuals who had side effects from chemotherapy in colon cancer patients. Therefore, it expressed the importance and need for further research on integrative medicine, combining TCM with Western medicine practices, as this is a method that helped many. In order for it to help a greater portion of our population, there is a need for more research to make it widespread. 

Lastly, I’d like to thank Dr. Amy Matecki, Dr. Gabrielle LeCompte, Dr. Charlene Ossler, and Krishna Bachina for constantly guiding us throughout our entire journey. Through them, I learned so much about this underexplored area of medicine and the writing process.