Auriculotherapy: complementary treatment in athletes with repetitive stress injury ­ pilot study

Introduction: Auriculotherapy treatment aims to stimulate points in the ear aiming at the rebalance of energies, resulting in improvement of pathologies. When talking about repetitive strain injuries (RSI) they are often found in the reality of a high performance athlete; the search for differentiated and effective treatments to assist in the recovery of injuries allows the insertion of differentiated techniques, such as techniques complementary. Objective: the study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of auriculotherapy as a complementary treatment in RSI. Methods: this is a pilot, experimental, non-randomized and non-blind study. The research was carried out with 10 high performance athletes, from the Municipal Sports Foundation of the city of Blumenau-SC, divided into two groups, one group received conventional physiotherapy and auriculotherapy treatment and the other only conventional physiotherapy. The evaluations were performed weekly after the consultations, using a questionnaire to assess pain, symptoms and medication use. To assist the evaluation, thermographic images were taken to evaluate the inflammatory process, the photos were taken before and after treatment. Results: the results found suggest improvement in both groups, however, the group where there was an association of conventional physical therapy and auriculotherapy showed significant improvements in relation to the other group. In addition, they showed a reduction in the use of medications and a decrease in the inflammatory process evaluated by thermography. Conclusion: auriculotherapy proved to be an important ally to conventional treatment and may be an option for complementary treatment in RSI.