[Acupuncture for treatment of depressive disorders in pain diseases].

Therapy with acupuncture as a part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is increasingly being used as an alternative or complementary method. The regular diagnostic processes and conventional therapies must primarily be applied as the basic principle of a treatment concept. In addition to a qualified education and training with recognition of the further qualification in acupuncture a continued medical education is required to treat patients. In the field of regular medical care diseases with the symptoms chronic low back pain, chronic low back pain with radicular symptoms radiating to the knee and chronic osteoarthrosis of the knee can be treated: by implementation of a differentiated documentation of the treatment and the results of treatment using Likert scales for the severity of depressive symptoms. Under the aspects of a health services research approach, the results of treatment with acupuncture in practice under the prerequisite of 15 sessions for chronic low back pain including radicular symptoms reaching the knee were analyzed based on syndromes of TCM. Due to the importance of depressive symptoms in pain disorders in a second group additional special acupuncture points (Ren 12, Bl 20, Bl 21, Ma 36, Mi 6, Pe 6) in the area of the conversion phase "earth" were additionally used to influence a depressive disorder under standardized aspects. The results showed the positive influence of a therapy with acupuncture on depressive symptoms in both groups M = 7.67, M = 7.95, M = 3.29 and M = 2.29 (p < 0.001) with significant differences (p < 0.01) and an increase in the effect when using additional specific points for treatment of depression (p < 0.01). Further investigations are necessary in the future for treatment with acupuncture using standardized and reproducible selection of acupuncture point.