- P-ISSN 1010-0695
- E-ISSN 2288-3339
Background and Purpose: Acupuncture with Aromatherapy(AA) is a branch of complementary or alternative therapy which begins to be used nowadays. As the use of aromatherapy itself has grown so rapidly in recent years, studies about its safety have been accumulated with activity so far. But safety about AA is not studied in clinics and the treatment method which let the needles to be inserted after spreading essential oils makes human body more bare to components than aromatherapy. Therefore, We were to examine the safety of AA on the total patients who had been treated with AA and physicians who had treated it. Methods: We observed every inpatients who had been treated with AA from November 21, 2005 to March 31, 2006, in Kyung Hee Oriental Medical Center. During treatment, we monitored all of the newly developed signs from the patients to assess the adverse effect of AA. The patients' and physicians' general characteristics (gender, age, present illness, and treatment days) were obtained from medical records and analyzed to assess the clinical safety of AA in detail. Results: There were four hundred forty patients treated with AA and the clinical adverse effects appeared in 3 of them, which can be assessed as 0.7%. The major symptom was chest discomfort and choking originated from smell aversion condition (2 patients), and the other adverse effect was itching sence and rubor. However, none of them seemed to have direct relation with AA. Total eight physicians operated AA and there was no symptom related to AA in everyone. Conclusions: We suggest that our results will make a contribution towards confirming the safety of AA by offering clinical evidence.