Options for pharmacological management of pain after cesarean delivery are limited, and pain control is often inadequate. A recent study evaluated the effectiveness of preoperative acupuncture as an adjunctive therapy for pain control after cesarean delivery compared with a placebo intervention and standard care alone.

Women scheduled to have an elective cesarean delivery with spinal analgesia were eligible for the study. Sixty women were randomized to the acupuncture group and 60 to the placebo intervention group. Another 60 women who met the eligibility criteria but were not included in the randomized investigation formed the standard care group. In addition to standard pain treatment, patients in the acupuncture group received preoperative auricular and body acupuncture with indwelling fixed and intradermal needles, respectively; women in the placebo group were treated with nonpenetrating needles.

On the first postoperative day, mean pain intensity on movement was lower in the acupuncture group than in either the placebo or standard care group. Fifty-nine patients in the acupuncture group were fully mobilized on the first postoperative day compared with 49 in the placebo group and 35 in the standard care group. By the first postoperative day, the Foley catheter was removed in 57 women in the acupuncture group, 43 in the placebo group, and 42 in the standard care group. The incidence of analgesia-related adverse events and quality of life were similar in all three groups.

According to the authors, the use of a nonrandomized standard care group may have introduced some bias and limited the validity of the data. Further, the acupuncture practitioners weren't blinded, which could have introduced performance bias.