Because the old woman was in a lot of pain in her joints, doctors looked at an X-ray of her knees. They found hundreds of small gold acupuncture needles in her tissue.
The 65-year-old woman from South Korea had already been told she had osteoarthritis, which is when the cartilage and bones in the joints break down, making them hurt and stiff. Last week, doctors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that she had turned to acupuncture when painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs didn’t help her knees and just made her stomach hurt.
Acupuncture is a kind of alternative medicine that uses needles to reportedly stimulate certain parts of the body to ease pain or cure a number of maladies.
The inquiry further says that the needles used in the woman’s acupuncture treatment were probably made of gold and were left in her tissue on purpose to make her feel better.
Dr. Ali Guermazi, a Boston University radiology professor who wasn’t involved in the case, believes that inserting needles or other things in the body might not be a good idea. When something becomes lodged in the body, it can cause swelling, pus-filled pockets, and infection.
It could also make it hard for a doctor to see an X-ray. Guermazi said, “The needles might cover up some of the anatomy.”
Guermazi said, “The body wants to get rid of the foreign object.” “It starts with some kind of defense mechanism, like swelling and making fibrous tissue around the object.”
Leaving needles in the body could also cause more issues. Guermazi said, “The patient can’t have an MRI because needles left in the body could move and hurt an artery.”
There isn’t a lot of evidence that acupuncture can help with health concerns. This recent report indicates that this procedure is still often utilized to help with sore joints. For instance, sterile gold threads are sometimes wrapped around the joint in Asian countries to treat arthritis.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the U.S. National Institutes of Health undertook a survey and discovered that about 3.1 million people and 150,000 children in the U.S. used acupuncture in 2007.