Acupuncture anesthesia for open heart surgery: Past, present and future

Fig. 1. A child, fully awake and comfortable, undergoing open heart surgery for repair of a congenital ventricular septal defect under acupuncture anesthesia in a hospital in Shanghai, photographed by the author during his 1972 visit to China. The word acupuncture combines the Latin acus (needle) and punctum (a prick) [1,2]. From the historical record of Huangdi Neijin (the Yellow Emperor's Classic), acupuncture has been used in China as a therapeutic tool for at least 2000 years [3]. Soldiers noted, after being wounded by arrows, that their pain often eased for quite a while. Therefore, a cause-and-effect relationship was assumed between the arrow wound and the unexpected diminution of pain. However, it has been little known in theWestern world until the early 1970s following U.S. President Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972 [4]. Acupuncture becomes one of the most popular treatments in alternative medicine and accounts for more than 10 million treatments given annually in the United States [5]. Much interest was further engendered by tales by subsequent visitors to China who witnessed surgical operations being successfully performed on conscious patients under acupuncture anesthesia [6–15]. Skeptics who deny that acupuncture anesthesia can work have suggested that acupuncture is nothing more than an effective use of hypnosis or autosuggestion. I was also a skeptic until I witnessed with myowneyes several operative procedures performedonpatients under acupuncture anesthesia including those with congenital (Fig. 1) and acquired valvular (Fig. 2) heart diseases. Being a native-born Chinese, I was able to communicate directly with the patients, without going through any interpreters, to find out what discomfort and if any pain they actually might experience during the procedures. Of course, I was not the only physician who was impressed by cardiac surgery under acupuncture anesthesia. Other well-known surgeons around theworld, such as DeBakey from the United States [16], Hollinger et al. [17] from Germany, and Caracausi from Italy [18] were too.