De Quervain's Tenosynovitis

One of the reasons for the mixed online evaluations of acupuncture treatment is that they do not distinguish between general acupuncture and complex Korean medicine treatments such as knife acupuncture and pharmacopuncture. While simple needles (wooden needles) are limited to stimulating superficial acupoints, knife acupuncture features a thick needle tip structured like a blade, allowing for the direct dissection of thickened tendon sheath tissue. RCTs and systematic reviews have reported that acupuncture treatment significantly improves pain indices (VAS) and functional scores in wrist tenosynovitis. Needling acupoints around the wrist that align with the pathway of the thumb tendon rapidly restores the circulation of Qi and blood. In chronic cases where blood stasis has hardened, fire acupuncture is used to add local heat stimulation to promote the breakdown of fibrotic tissue, while thread embedding is used to support the tendon structure. At Dongjedang, we vary the combination of external treatments according to the stage of symptoms and accelerate the recovery process using herbal medicine tailored to the patient's constitution.