Variazioni dell'ansia in corso di terapia del dolore benigno mediante agopuntura - Changes of anxiety during acupuncture therapy of benign pain

Thirty four patient, treated with a cycle of acupuncture for a benign pain, has been investigated by test STAI-Y1 for the anxiety, before and after the therapy, to verify if and in which measure there has been changes in the levels of anxiety during this therapy. The average initial value of the test been of 43.4 against 35.2 of the final value, with an improvement of the 35% of the levels of anxiety. This improvement is statistically significant with the t test for paired data (P<0.0001). The individual improvements of the anxiety appears statistically correlated with the pain only for any of the pain relief indexes investigated; almost always pain improvements and changes of the anxiety seem to be statistically independent. It needs therefore conclude that, during analgesic acupuncture, an improvement of the anxiety happens generally, that it appears however almost always independent from the analgesic results. A possible explanation of such result, the confirm previous studies too, could be the activation, in different measure in the patients, of different neuronal circuits or biochemical mechanism responsible for the analgesic and antianxiety action for the acupuncture, or a variable establishment of a good physician-patient relationship.