Acupuncture tied to long-term hot flash relief.(GYNECOLOGY)

SAN ANTONIO--A course of acupuncture reduced hot flashes in women with a history of breast cancer by more than half while improving sleep and quality-of-life measures to a similar extent as hormone therapy in a Swedish randomized trial.

Particularly noteworthy was the durability of acupunctured benefits. Nine months following conclusion of the 3-month course of acupuncture sessions, most patients continued to have a significant reduction in hot flashes and improved measures of well-being, Dr. Jessica Frisk reported at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

She added that in her clinical practice, acupuncture has become her first-line treatment for hot flashes. Hormone ther- apy (HT) is more effective; indeed, it essentially eliminated hot flashes in the women randomized to the HT study arm. But Scandinavian breast cancer patients now reject HT as an option because of reports of an associated increased risk of breast cancer recurrence.

"They want other things--and acupuncture is quite a safe treatment," said Dr. Frisk, a general surgeon at Linkoping (Sweden) University.

She reported on 45 women with hot flashes who had been diagnosed with breast cancer a mean of more than 4 years earlier. In all, 27 women were randomized to 12 weeks of electrostimulated acupuncture, and 18 women to 24 months of HT. The acupuncture program consisted of two 30-minute sessions per week for the first 2 weeks, followed by once-weekly sessions for the next 10.

The median number of hot flashes dropped from 9.6 per 24 hours at baseline to 4.3 per 24 hours at week 12 in 19 women who completed the 12-week course of acupuncture. The median hot flash frequency at 1 year was 4.9 per 24 hours in 14 women who had no additional acupuncture sessions beyond the ...