World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Smoking Cessation and Treatment of Tobacco Dependence

Pok Oi Hospital - Community-based Acupuncture Smoking Cessation Service

The Department of Health has commissioned Pok Oi Hospital to provide free smoking cessation service using acupuncture since April 2010. To increase accessibility of the service, the programme offers territory-wide service in Hong Kong.

The programme is supported by State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Mainland China. The Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, which is also the WHO Collaborating Centre for Traditional Medicine, is responsible for designing the treatment protocol and provide training to local Chinese Medicine Practitioners (CMP).

An initial assessment will be conducted by trained CMP to collect information on basic demographic data, amount and years of smoking, number of past quitting attempts, and Fragerstrom score on nicotine dependence. Clients recruited will be offered at least six sessions of body acupuncture within one month to relieve the withdrawal symptoms, according to predesigned treatment protocol. For each session of body acupuncture, smokers will receive acupuncture treatment on both side of the body at 8 points, namely “DU20 Baihui”, “Ex-HN3 Yin tang”, “LU7 Lie que”, “L14 He gu”, “PC6 Nei guan”, “ST36 Zu san li”, “SP6 San yin jiao”, and “LR3 Tai chong”.  Besides, all participants will be taught to do auricular acupuncture themselves by using vaccaria seeds at home to further relieve the withdrawal symptoms of nicotine. The following acupuncture points are selected according to the somatotopical presentation in the auricle: “MA-AH7 Jiaogan”, “MA-IC5 Kou”, “MA-IC2 Qiguan”, “MA-IC3 Neifenmi”, “MA-TF1 Ear Shenmen”, “MA-IC Wei”, “MA-IC1 Fei” and “MA-AT1 Pizhixia”. They are instructed to press each auricular acupuncture point for 20 seconds every one to two hours or whenever they have craving for smoking. In addition to acupuncture, trained CMP are responsible for providing counselling on smoking cessation to the clients.

Each client will be followed up at first and second weeks after initiation of first acupuncture session. A structured questionnaire is used to collect information on withdrawal symptoms and any side-effect of acupuncture. All clients will also be followed up at 26-week and 52-week to report the outcome of 7-day point prevalence of smoking.