Comparison between the effect of acupressure and acupuncture of Conception vessel-24 in controlling gag reflex for prosthodontic purpose (An In ViVo study) Pricnciple investigator

In dentistry the gag reflex considers as a major problem in treating the patient especially in making impression for prosthetic purpose, even though there are several methods and approach to control the gag reflex but their effect is minimum or hopeless in some cases. As the studies show the acupuncture and acupressure of conception vessel-24 are effective in most cases, the aim of my study is to compare between these two methods. Patients attending college of dentistry were selected according to the inclusion criteria to undergo this test, starting with filling the consent form then measuring the gag reflex is performed and the same patient underwent both procedures acupressure and acupuncture. 120 patients were examined for the gag reflex according to inclusion criteria, 70 were excluded and 50 were involved, 25 female and 25 male. Regarding acupressure, it is evident that there was an increase in the distance after acupressure among patients aged less than 40 years and patients aged 60-69 years, while there was a decrease among patients aged 40-59 years. Considering acupuncture, there was also no consistent pattern throughout the age groups. The maximum increase in the distance was among patients aged 50-59 years, No significant association was found between gender and the insertion distance, whether using acupressure (p = 0.259) or acupuncture (p = 0.703). But, in general, the increase among males was higher than that among females. Our result indicates that both interventions acupressure and acupuncture of CV 24 is effective in controlling gag reflex by increase the reading, with more increasing in reading after acupuncture intervention.