Fuzopuncture : A New Therapeutic Approach to Treat Joint Disorders

♦ History of acupuncture goes back for more than three thousand years in China. Over 3,000 years, 361 classical acupuncture points were employed for the treatment of various diseases in Northeast Asia.

♦ Efforts to investigate the characteristic of acupuncture points have revealed that loci with dense neurovascular complexes coincided with the acupuncture points. Stimulation of acupuncture points seems to generate and transmit neural activation signals in a facilitative manner to modulate various disease symptoms.

♦ Among medical experts, manipulation of acupuncture needle attracts much concern for the effective treatment of disorder conditions. Manual needle manipulation or electrical stimulation after needle insertion has been commonly used to strengthen the effects of acupuncture. Although manual acupuncture or electro-acupuncture appears to be as effective as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and opioid analgesics for postoperative pain control or inflammatory pathogenesis reversal, maintenance of needles might be cumbersome, particularly in agitated animals. 

♦ In recent years, the injection of pharmacological medication or purified herbal medicine to acupuncture points is widely used to enhance and prolong the effects of stimulation of acupuncture points. It is a new acupuncture therapy that combines acupuncture and medication.

♦ The fusion of medication (Fuzo) and acupuncture (puncture) coined the word Fuzopuncture. Fuzopuncture is one of most prominent acupuncture point injection (API) techniques which combine acupuncture and medication in Korea. Fuzopuncture utilizes specific acupuncture points localized on the joints, muscles acting in concert with the joints, and facet joints affecting the innervation of the joints.

♦ In this blog, I introduce theoretical background of Fuzopuncture and present my clinical outcomes of Fuzopuncture of placental extract in several pain diseases. Combined with acupuncture therapy, placental extract extends its therapeutic limit from fatigue relief to pain control. I wish my writing provides a useful therapeutic tool towards pain diseases for general practitioners.