Profile of the acupuncture service at the Small Animals Veterinary Hospital of UFRRJ-RJ (2006-2016)

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Santos Godoi T.L.O., Villas-Boas J.D., Souza C.C.F., Beck M.M., MouraG.H.C., Lima M.T.R. & Medeiros M.A. [Profile of the acupuncture service at the Small Animals Veterinary Hospital of UFRRJ-RJ (2006-2016).] Perfil de atendimento por acupuntura no Hospital Veterinário de Pequenos Animais da UFRRJ-RJ (2006-2016). Revista Brasileira de Medicina Veterinária, 38(Supl.2):49- 56, 2016. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Medicina Veterinária, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, BR 465, Km 7, Campus Universitário, Seropé- dica, RJ 23890-000, Brasil. Email: magda.medeiros@gmail.com The acupuncture service of the Veterinary Hospital of Small Animal-UFRRJ, located in Seropédica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, aims to provide quality care in acupuncture and at low cost, offer training of students in the practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine and be a data source for clinical research in the acupuncture area. In order to provide the profile of this acupuncture service, it was performed a retrospective study of medical records from January 2006 to March 2016. Is was evaluated data such as gender, age and breed, in addition to the main pathologies treated, city of origin of patients and techniques of stimulation of acupuncture points. The sessions were held once a week and 372 patients were treated. Dogs accounted for 90.4% while the cats were only 9.6% of treated animals, 49.5% were males and 50.5% females, with mean age of 5.27 years. The most animals were mixed breed, followed by poodles and dachshunds. The places of origin most common were the city of Seropédica (26,9%), where is located UFRRJ, the West Zone (26,3%) and Baixada Fluminense (16,9%). Neurological and musculoskeletal disorders accounted for respectively 67.3% and 23.8% of the treated cases, where distemper sequelaes, discopathies and medullary trauma were the most common diseases. The techniques used for stimulating acupuncture points were dry needling (99.2%), moxibustion (26,6%); electroacupuncture (19,4%) and pharmacocupuncture (9,7%). 65% of the animals who continued the treatment (received more than 2 sessions) showed significant improvement in the initial clinical condition and 10,6% of the animals did not show any clinical improvement. These findingsindicate that acupuncture is a promising therapy in clinical small animals and that further studies should be conducted to demonstrate their effectiveness in the treatment of different pathologies.