Quality of life of people seeking for acupuncture treatment

Background The use of Acupuncture, part of Chinese Medicine, has grown as well as the need to understand its effects. The Quality of Life (QOL) assessment is an important way to have a global view of the patient. Objective To assess the QoL of people who seek acupuncture at the outpatient clinic of an acupuncture school. Methods QOL assessment using WHOQOL-BREF applied only once to people who voluntarily sought for acupuncture at the general outpatient clinic of Faculdade EBRAMEC in 2016. Results People who sought for acupuncture treatment presented lower mean QoL value in all domains compared to normative values for Brazil, with physical domain presenting lower values than the other domains. It was also observed that male patients had higher values in the physical, psychological domains and general QOL compared to women. Conclusion Our data demonstrated that people seeking for acupuncture treatment presented lower values of QOL in comparison to a referential study with a Brazilian population, providing for the first time reference values measured by WHOQOL-bref, for patients seeking for acupuncture in the city of Sao Paulo.