Authors' reply.

Sir,

Thank you for your attention and comments on my case report.[1] Restricted to the expertise and knowledge, my article was mainly focusing on the injury of his eyeball. Thus, the details of descriptions for acupuncture treatment seem to be neglected. And I hope the following steps could deal with parts of your doubts.

First, for the medical history of his acupuncture treatment, I have talked with his relatives. The cerebral infarction led to his hemiplegia and hemianopsia. They have chosen the acupoints around the eye for his hemianopsia treatment for 1 year and have got slightly improvement. Unfortunately, we cannot contact with the acupuncture therapist directly, and the exact acupoints and protocol for this medical accident were not clear. Second, I think you might misunderstand the size of the lesion. We cannot find any hole with the diameter of 3 mm, but only a 3 mm long self-sealed corneal injury could be observed, which we guess might be injured during pulling out the needle. Moreover, the diameter of the iris hole was approximately 0.25 mm, which we can find clearly from the figure. Third, during the acupuncture therapy, the patient did not feel seriously painful. He mistakenly reckoned the pain come from the acupuncture therapy (the stimulation of acupoints) rather than the corneal injury. Hence, he endured the slightly pain than usual without bleeding until the end. All the histories of the accident were obtained from his relatives.

In China, acupuncture therapy has been widely used in ophthalmic clinic. The figure shows several acupoints around eyes [Fig. 1]. Since closing to the eyeball, the periocular acupuncture may hurt the eyes in any careless situation. This article aims to attract the importance for the acupuncture therapy around eye acupoints. Moreover, I think acupuncturists know more about the selection of acupoints and its selecting principle for eye-related acupoints diseases. Sorry for the incomplete on this issue.

Figure 1

Several acupoints around eyes in normal situation during the therapy process in Tianjin Eye Hospital, Tianjin, China

Yours sincerely.

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