The Effectiveness of Battlefield Acupuncture (BFA) in Addition to Standard Post-Surgical Shoulder Physical Therapy

The opioid epidemic affects all walks of life in the United States, with the percentage of servicemen and women addicted to opioids higher than the general population. In 2016, opioids were involved in over 60% of drug overdose deaths. Use and abuse of prescribed opioids negatively impacts the deployment readiness of DoD service members. Side effects from narcotic pain medications directly increase duty limitations. There is a clear need for alternative and integrative methods of treating acute and chronic pain.

Battlefield Acupuncture (BFA) was developed by Dr. Richard Niemtzow in 2001 to treat acute and chronic pain in austere environments. Since its inception, BFA has been used in integrative medical treatments for a myriad of conditions. Medical providers and researchers have used BFA to treat neuropathic symptoms, sore throats, thoracic pain from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and post-surgical musculoskeletal pain.

BFA provides an integrative pain treatment option for service members to decrease prescription medication usage. BFA research indicates clinically significant reduction in NSAID use, shorter admission times and greater perceived pain reduction (p <0.0001) within the first 24 hours of BFA treatment that persisted up to 48 hours. Cadets at the United States Military Academy are faced with the challenges of returning to academic classes as little as 2 days after orthopedic surgery often prior to controlling their post-operative pain. Collectively, current studies elicit short term reduction in pain medication use and perceived pain (up to 72 hours), but show no significant difference at long term follow ups (up to 30 days post treatment) relative to perceived pain. To date, there are no studies investigating BFA’s effectiveness in reducing post-operative shoulder pain and pain medication use.