Clean Needles for Acupuncture Safety

By Michael Jabbour, MS, LAc, William Morris, DAOM, PhD, LAc and Steven Schram, PhD, DC, LAc

A recent article in the British Medical Journal by Woo et al. argues that infection from acupuncture needles is a serious problem. Pointing at 50 cases worldwide since 1970, the author implies that acupuncture is dangerous because the risk of infection is high and that acupuncturists are not using sufficient care to prevent infections.

Both assertions are patently false, the risks greatly exaggerated and, if anything, has clarified for the public how safe trained practitioners of acupuncture are. Every medical treatment from aspirin to brain surgery carries some risk and acupuncture is no exception. According to one study, "Although the incidence of minor adverse events associated with acupuncture may be considerable, serious adverse events are rare."

Consider the facts in context. There are currently 30,000 acupuncturists and 8,000 acupuncture students in the U.S. Each sees an average of 50 patients per week. This equates to roughly 1.5 million treatments per week and 78 million acupuncture treatments per year. This does not include the multitude of acupuncturists in Europe, Australia or the Far East, where acupuncture is routinely practiced and, in main cases, fully integrated into mainstream medicine and government-reimbursed health care. The claim of 50 disparate infections worldwide over a 40-year period comes to approximately one infection per year globally. If anything, this article highlights the extraordinary safety of acupuncture treatments, not that acupuncture presents a danger to the public. Given the billions of acupuncture treatments administered worldwide, it is clear that there is an extremely low risk of infection from acupuncture needle insertion.