[Electroacupuncture at Dong's Sanqixue combined with auricular point sticking in treatment of post-operative complications of complex anal fistula: a real world research].

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the clinical therapeutic effect of electroacupuncture (EA) at Dong's Sanqixue combined with auricular point sticking on post-operative complications of complex anal fistula. METHODS The data of 318 patients undergoing anal fistula surgery were analyzed retrospectively. In accordance with whether accepted the combined treatment with EA at bilateral Dong's Sanqixue and auricular point sticking or not after operation, they were divided into an observation group (157 cases) and a control group (161 cases). At the ratio of 1︰1, the nearest neighbor matching method was adopted to match 125 pairs of patients. The score of visual analogue scale (VAS) on day 1, 7 and 14 after operation, the incidence of urine retention on day 1 and 3 after operation, the anorectal dynamical indexs (anal resting pressure, rectal resting pressure, anal maximum systolic pressure and rectal minimum sensitivity) before and after operation, as well as the clinical therapeutic effect were compared in the patients between the two groups separately. RESULTS For VAS score, there was an interaction between therapeutic method and treatment duration (P 0.05). On day 7 and 14 after operation, VAS scores were lower than those on day 1 in the two groups (P<0.05), and VAS scores on day 7 and 14 after operation in the observation group were lower than those in the control group (P<0.05). On day 3 after operation, the incidence of urine retention in the observation group was lower than that in the control group (0.8% [1/125] vs 9.6% [12/125], P<0.05). On day 14 after operation, anal resting pressure, anal maximum systolic pressure and rectal minimum sensitivity in the observation group were lower than those in the control group (P<0.05), and rectal resting pressure was higher than that in the control group (P<0.05). In 1 month after operation, the total effective rate was 96.0% (120/125) in the observation group, higher than 80.8% (101/125) in the control group (P<0.05). CONCLUSION Electroacupuncture at Dong's Sanqixue combined with auricular point sticking therapy alleviates pain, reduces the incidence of urine retention, improves anal defecation function and clinical therapeutic effect in the patients after complex anal fistula surgery.