Overview
In the field of ENT diseases, the most common pathologies are represented by: tonsillitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, tracheitis, rhinitis, otitis, and sinusitis.
The treatment of these diseases in the acute phase is not the subject of this article, because they are everyday diseases for which people do not look for special solutions, they pass by themselves.
Even the symptomatic treatment that the patient could take at the recommendation of the doctor or the pharmacist is usually only meant to make the symptoms more bearable, not to cure the disease.
The most frequent exception here is represented by tonsillitis and some sinusitis and otitis that can benefit from antibiotics if the clinical picture is more noisy.
The real problem, however, is the chronicity of these conditions and the tendency to develop a disease with recurrent exacerbations. Exacerbations really respond to antibiotics and can pass faster with them (although not in all cases), but antibiotics do not target the recurrent or chronic aspect of the disease.
Approach to ENT Diseases in Classical Medicine
The sphere of these diseases is represented by inflammations of the organs in the ENT sphere. These are mostly of an infectious nature, here the viral or bacterial etiology of the diseases comes into question.
In more serious cases of bacterial etiology, antibiotics can be administered with curative intent, and these can shorten the duration of the disease and quickly improve the symptoms.
In the case of viral etiology, antibiotics have no effect. However, in certain special cases, antibiotics can be recommended by the attending physician to prevent a bacterial superinfection over the present viral one.
Regarding the chronic aspect of these conditions, western medicine does not really have the tools to solve the problem effectively and definitively. There are for certain cases aerosols with different substances (especially in respiratory diseases) or different surgical procedures (the famous points for sinusitis, or the excision of an excess of mucous from the nasal turbinates in the case of hypertrophic rhinitis) that may or may not give long-term results.
For tonsillitis, one can resort to surgical excision of the tonsils, a procedure that “miraculously” solves recurrent tonsillitis, but even these are debatable and there is no unanimity among specialists if these procedures are really beneficial or not, because tonsils and polyps are lymphatic stations important in local immunity and their elimination results in a weakness of local immunity.
The patient becomes more prone to infections and inflammations of the ENT sphere in the future, as well as to an advancement of these conditions to the lungs, resulting more often in lung diseases.
Treatment of ENT diseases in Acupuncture
Although there is in acupuncture the possibility of treating the acute phase of ENT diseases, patients usually do not seek help from acupuncture for acute problems but for their chronic background.
In acupuncture, there is a fairly developed theory regarding infectious diseases and their evolution, as well as beneficial treatment modalities depending on the phase in which they are. The first treatise on such ailments was written around 200 AD by Zhang Zhong Jing and was called “Treatise on Cold Diseases” (Shang Han Lun).
He divided the evolution of infectious diseases into six stages corresponding to the 6 divisions (six couplets of two meridians each). Later, throughout the generations, but especially after 1600 AD, this theory developed a lot, developing the theory of “hot diseases”. There is therefore a rich history in acupuncture in relation to the treatment of infectious diseases in general, not only those in the field of ENT.
The basic concept in relation to chronic infectious diseases that are periodically exacerbated is based on the idea of a “latent pathogenic factor”. That is, the fact that a disease can heal incompletely and actually remain a pathogenic factor buried somewhere in the body because the body’s immunity was not strong enough to eliminate it completely.
Unfortunately, in these places, the antibiotics no longer kill that pathogenic factor and when it finds favorable conditions, it multiplies again and causes a return of the original disease. The way in which acupuncture works in these cases is to identify exactly the seat of the latent pathogenic factor through specific diagnostic means, and by encouraging both local and general immunity of the body to eliminate the pathogenic factor.
Also, an important therapeutic objective is to establish the cause that led to the weakening of the immunity that allows the latent state. The evolution under acupuncture treatment is not as fast as that under antibiotics, but most of the time it is definitive, and the patient is cured of his chronic condition.
And all this without side effects. Most of the time, the treatment also identifies and solves other problems that are not (for a person without knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine) visibly related to these conditions, but which can be their cause.
Conclusion
If in the acute phase of an ENT problem, there is no need for treatment, or if in this phase classical medicine offers both symptomatic and etiological remedies, the real difficulty is the treatment of chronic diseases.
Here acupuncture, which is based on a long history of studying and treating their diseases, has a lot to offer, the brightest horizon here being the prospect of complete healing without the side effects of the chronic problem.