Treatment of Nocturia Symptoms with Acupuncture

Abstract

Nocturia is a common symptom in the elderly. It causes sleeping disorders and is also associated with a higher risk of falling and increased mortality. The majority of nocturia patients prescribed desmopressin although it may cause significant hyponatremia which is a serious life threatening side effect. There is a need to use safer alternative treatment strategies specialy for older nocturia patients. We aim to examine the effect of acupuncture treatment on nocturia patients as a safe alternative treatment option. 35 nocturia patients have been joined to our study aged between 28 to 72. Among those patients in the study, 23 were female while 12 were male. Acupuncture treatment were applied in every 2 days totaling 10 sessions and each treatment session has lasted for 20 minutes. Nocturia frequency of the patients were recorded 1 to 6 before acupuncture treatment sessions. We have observed that nocturia symptoms recovered completely in 60% of the patients at the end of 10 sessions of the treatment while nocturia frequency were reduced to one per night in 37% of the patients. On the other hand nocturia sypmtoms in 2.8% of the patients were not changed at all. As a result 97% of the patients have responded to acupuncture treatment positively which applied bilaterally to Yintang point, Ki 3, Liv 3, Sp 9, L. I. 4, Ht 7, Sp 6, Lu 9, Sp 3, P 6 points. According to our results we conclude that acupuncture treatment should be widely used in nocturia patients of older ages as well as relatively younger adults.