Exploring the Multiple Roles of Acupuncture in Alleviating the Opioid Crisis.

Abstract

Note: This column continues our quarterly Turning Points series from the Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR). Author Jiang-Ti Kong, MD, a member of the Board of Directors of SAR, is a pain management specialist, anesthesiologist, and medical acupuncturist at Stanford University School of Medicine. In addition to teaching, research and a conventional pain management practice, Dr. Kong leads the acupuncture service at Stanford Pain Management Center. Her commentary was stimulated by a three pronged strategy on the opioid crisis authored by leaders of the USA National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) published in October 2017 in the New England Journal of Medicine. — John Weeks, Editor-in-Chief