Centre for Complementary Medicine Research, The University of Western Sydney, Penrith South, NSW, Australia.
BMC Complement Altern Med. 2009 Dec 12;9:50. doi: 10.1186/1472-6882-9-50.
In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) is now an accepted and effective treatment for infertility, however IVF is acknowledged as contributing to, rather than lessening, the overall psychosocial effects of infertility. Psychological and counselling interventions have previously been widely recommended in parallel with infertility treatments but whilst in many jurisdictions counselling is recommended or mandatory, it may not be widely used. Acupuncture is increasingly used as an adjunct to IVF, in this preliminary study we sought to investigate the experience of infertile women who had used acupuncture to improve their fertility.
A sample of 20 women was drawn from a cohort of women who had attended for a minimum of four acupuncture sessions in the practices of two acupuncturists in South Australia. Eight women were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Six had sought acupuncture during IVF treatment and two had begun acupuncture to enhance their fertility and had later progressed to IVF. Descriptive content analysis was employed to analyse the data.
Four major categories of perceptions about acupuncture in relation to reproductive health were identified: (a) Awareness of, and perceived benefits of acupuncture; (b) perceptions of the body and the impact of acupuncture upon it; (c) perceptions of stress and the impact of acupuncture on resilience; and (d) perceptions of the intersection of medical treatment and acupuncture.
This preliminary exploration, whilst confined to a small sample of women, confirms that acupuncture is indeed perceived by infertile women to have an impact to their health. All findings outlined here are reported cautiously because they are limited by the size of the sample. They suggest that further studies of acupuncture as an adjunct to IVF should systematically explore the issues of wellbeing, anxiety, personal and social resilience and women's identity in relation to sexuality and reproduction.
体外受精（IVF）现在被认为是一种治疗不孕不育的有效方法，然而，IVF 被认为会加重而不是减轻不孕不育的整体心理社会影响。心理和咨询干预措施以前曾被广泛推荐与不孕不育治疗同时进行，但尽管在许多司法管辖区都建议或强制进行咨询，但它可能并没有被广泛使用。针灸作为 IVF 的辅助手段越来越多地被使用，在这项初步研究中，我们试图调查使用针灸来提高生育能力的不孕女性的体验。
从在南澳大利亚的两位针灸师的诊所至少接受了四次针灸治疗的女性队列中抽取了 20 名女性作为样本。使用半结构化问卷对 8 名女性进行了访谈。其中 6 人在 IVF 治疗期间寻求了针灸治疗，2 人开始针灸以提高生育能力，后来进展到 IVF。采用描述性内容分析对数据进行分析。
确定了与生殖健康相关的针灸认知的四个主要类别：（a）对针灸的认识和感知益处；（b）对身体的感知及其对身体的影响；（c）对压力的感知及其对韧性的影响；（d）对医疗治疗和针灸交叉点的感知。
这项初步探索虽然仅限于一小部分女性，但证实了针灸确实被不孕女性认为对其健康有影响。这里概述的所有发现都被谨慎报告，因为它们受到样本量的限制。它们表明，进一步研究针灸作为 IVF 的辅助手段应系统地探讨与生育相关的健康、焦虑、个人和社会韧性以及女性身份问题。
