CLINICAL TRIAL article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Sleep Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1580759
This article is part of the Research TopicMechanisms and Interventions for Post-Operative Neurocognitive Disorder and Sleep DisruptionsView all 17 articles
Effects of electroacupuncture on the incidence of postoperative supraventricular arrhythmia and sleep quality in patients undergoing thoracoscopic surgery: A Randomised Controlled Trial
Provisionally accepted
- 1The First Affiliated Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
- 2First Clinical Medical College, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
- 3Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of New Drug Screening, Guangzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Supraventricular arrhythmia and sleep disturbance frequently occur after thoracoscopic surgery for lung cancer. The present study is designed to evaluate the hypothesis that electroacupuncture is an effective treatment of supraventricular arrhythmia and sleep disorders following thoracoscopic lung cancer surgery.Methods: Adult patients scheduled for single-port thoracoscopic lung cancer surgery were randomly assigned to the Electroacupuncture (EA) and control groups. The primary outcome of this trial was the incidence of new-onset supraventricular tachycardia(SVT) including atrial flutter, atrial fibrillation, atrial tachycardia and atrioventricular junctional tachycardia during the first 24 hours after surgery.The authors analyzed 77 patients (EA,38;control,39).The incidence of new-onset SVT was significantly lower in the EA group compared with the control group during the first 24 postoperative hours; 4(10.5%) vs. 13(33.3%), respectively, P=0.02. Patients in the EA group had longer total sleep time (119.0 vs. 209.5, P=0.02), longer duration of nonrapid eye movement sleep on the first postoperative night (P < 0.05). The awake time was significantly shorter compared with the control group(134.5.0 vs. 225.0, P=0.01). Dosage of remifentanil and incidence of intraoperative hypotension were significantly reduced in the EA group (911.1 vs. 1095.9, P=0.01). However, VAS scores after surgery didn't differ between groups. In all the patients recruited, adverse effects such as redness, swelling and inflammatory reactions were not observed at the acupuncture site.The results of this study suggest that perioperative electroacupuncture treatment could be a promising strategy to reduce the incidence of new-onset SVTand improve sleep disturbance in patients undergoing thoracoscopic surgery for lung cancer.
Keywords: Electroacupuncture, Thoracoscopic surgery, supraventricular tachycardia, Sleep disturbance, lung cancer
Received: 21 Feb 2025; Accepted: 11 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Ding, Ma, Wang, Song, Cao and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ying Cao, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of New Drug Screening, Guangzhou, China
Caineng Wu, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.