THE EFFECTIVENESS 65COMPARISON BETWEEN MEFENAMIC ACID AND ACUPUNCTURE POINT OF SAN JIAO YIN (SP6) ON DYSMENORRHEA PAIN REDUCTION

Abstract

Background : Dysmenorrhea was one of the most common gynecology complaints , especially in young women. This caused stomach pain or back pain or others uncomfortable feeling, at before, after or during menstruation which greatly affected the quality of life. Efforts reduced or eliminated pain usually use pharmacological or non-pharmacological treatments. Mefenamic acid is one of the pain and inflamation relievers. These drugs included non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) worked to inhibit swelling, pain, stiffness, and fever. Non-medical therapies such as acupuncture have been used to treat dysmenorrhea and have been recommended as non intervention pharmacology. The most commonly used acupuncture point in the treatment of dysmenorrhea was San Yin Jiao (SP6), which was the point on the Tai Yin meridian of the spleen.

Materials and methods : Mefenamic acid and acupuncture at the San Yin Jiao (SP6) points. The design of this study was a quasi experiment . The design used was non-randomized pretest-posttest control group design. The independent variable in this study was the use of mefenamic acid and the San Yin Jiao (SP6) acupuncture point was on the right leg calf and the dependent variable was the scale of pain using VAS. The sample used was 60 people.

Results: The Wilcoxon test showed that the treatment of pain with mefenamic acid and acupuncture all decreased significantly. The average decline in the mefenamic acid group was 1.5 and in the acupuncture group it was 1.4. These results indicated the handling of pain using both mefenamic acid and acupuncture werej significantly reduced pain. The handling of menstrual pain between mefenamic acid and acupuncture showed a very small difference of only 0.01 in the Man Whitney test. These results indicated that the treatment of menstrual pain between both mefenamic acid and acupuncture had the ability to reduce menstrual pain so that there were not significant differences.

Conclusion: there were differences in decreasing pre and post menstrual pain in the Acupuncture group Sp 6 and mefenamic acid. There was no difference in decreased dysmenorrhea pain between mefenamic acid and SP6 point acupuncture. So that SP6 acupuncture could be an alternative to non-drug therapy to reduce menstrual pain which did not cause side effects.

Keywords: mefenamic acid, SP6 point acupuncture, dysmenorrhea.