Table 1.
Study and setting | Age (gender) |
Reason for AT | Type of AT (method and duration) |
Practitioner | Selected acupoints | AEs and severity | Outcomes | Causality* |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ye, 2014 [22], Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China |
48 (female) | Constipation | Method: auricular acupressure using auricular plaster with vaccaria seeds Duration: not reported |
Physician | Shenmen, kidney, liver, spleen, stomach, temple, subcortex, forehead, occiput | Event(s): dizziness Severity: not reported |
Recovery after removing taped seeds | Probable/likely |
| ||||||||
Yu and Xie, 2010 [23], Teda Hospital, Tianjin, China |
41 (male) | Lumbar muscle strain | Method: auricular acupressure using auricular plaster with vaccaria seeds Duration: three days per treatment, 4 treatments in total (12 days) |
Physician | Heart, liver, spleen, occiput, shenmen, sympathetic | Event(s): somnolence Severity: not reported |
Recovery after removing taped seeds | Probable/likely |
| ||||||||
Huo et al., 2000 [24], Chinese PLA 546 Hospital, Xinjiang, China |
43 (male) | Dilated cardiomyopathy | Method: auricular acupressure using auricular plaster with vaccaria seeds Duration: three days per treatment, 5 treatments in total (15 days) |
Not reported | Heart, liver, lung, shenmen, spleen, sympathetic, occiput | Event(s): somnolence Severity: not reported |
Recovery after removing taped seeds | Probable/likely |
| ||||||||
Ma, 1992 [25], Ningyang TCM Hospital, Shandong, China |
58 (female) | Chronic diarrhea | Method: auricular acupressure using auricular plaster with vaccaria seeds Duration: 30 minutes |
Not reported | Large intestine, small intestine, shenmen, liver, sympathetic, spleen | Event(s): abdominal pain Severity: severe |
Recovery after removing taped seeds | Possible |
AT: auricular therapy, AE: adverse event, PLA: People's Liberation Army, and TCM: traditional Chinese medicine.
*The WHO-Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) System for Standardized Case Causality Assessment: certain—a plausible time relationship that adverse events clearly occurred after receiving AT and disappeared after withdrawal, and these events could not be explained by other health problems or interventions; probable/likely—a reasonable time relationship that the onset of symptoms was most likely related to AT and that was unlikely attributed to other health problems or interventions; possible—a reasonable time relationship that the onset of symptoms was most likely related to AT but that could also be explained by other health problems or interventions, and the information at withdrawal was lacking or unclear; unlikely—there was an improbable time relationship between AT and the adverse event; conditional/unclassified—event occurred but more data were essential for a proper causality assessment; unassessable/unclassifiable—an adverse event was suggested by a report but cannot be judged due to insufficient or contradictory information.