Close look at the experiences of patients enrolled in a clinical trial of acupuncture treatment for atrial fibrillation in Korea: a qualitative study nested within a randomised controlled trial.

Objective: To explore the experiences of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) in the context of a prospective, two-parallel-armed, participant-blinded and assessor-blinded sham-controlled randomised trial.

Design: A nested qualitative study within an ongoing randomised controlled trial to explore acupuncture's antiarrhythmic effects on drug refractory acupuncture in persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) (ACU-AF trial).

Participants: Participants were recruited using purposeful sampling and a maximum variation strategy with regard to treatment allocation (treatment or control) and protocol completion (completion or non-completion).

Additional Effects of Back-Shu Electroacupuncture and Moxibustion in Cardioprotection of Rat Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury.

Many preclinical studies show that electroacupuncture (EA) on PC6 and ST36 can reduce infarct size after ischemia-reperfusion (IR) injury. Yet studies to enhance the treatment effect size are limited. The purpose of this study was to explore whether EA has additional myocardial protective effects on an ischemia-reperfusion (IR) injury rat model when back-shu EA and moxibustion are added.