EP203 Acupuncture as an adjuvant to epidural infiltration for low back pain

<h3></h3> <b>Please confirm that an ethics committee approval has been applied for or granted:</b> Not relevant <h3>Background and Aims</h3> Low back pain,is one of the more spread disease in the world,specially in elderly people with comorbidity.The aim of this article is to show the effectiveness of acupuncture as an adjuvant to the classic epidural infiltration.Because elderly patients have coronary disease,hypertension,diabetis and dislypidemia,it was better to associate acupuncture and not NSAID or analgesic or antidepressant 0r neuropathic drugs that all have some abuse to the elderly ill patient <h3>Methods</h3> We took a 20 elder patients aged more 65 years old half of them female with at least two diseases of:coronary artery disease,hypertension,diabetis second type,dyslipidemia.After having the result of the IRM,the patients received an epidural infiltration with depomedrol(methylprednisolone) 1mg/kg between the levels L2-L3,or L3-L4, or L4-L5, or L5-S1.Also they received twice in the week an acupuncture session with moxibustion with or without neurostimulation for one month for low back pain in the acupoints:EX-B2,BL-23,2425,26,54,57,13,GB-30,32,34,39,GI-4.Those whose hacing aspirine,they stopped 5 days before the process <h3>Results</h3> 16 of the patients after one month had a relief of 80% of their low back pain and they were pleased with the outcome,the other 4 patients had a second epidural infiltration with methylprednisolone and their pain was relieved also about 80% <h3>Conclusions</h3> Acupuncture as an adjuvant in the therapy of low back pain by epidural infiltration in elderly ill patients with comorbidity could help in relieving pain instead traditional drugs that might abuse these patients.