Thanks Etherbunny! Very helpful.... I am ashamed to admit though, I've never done a cervical plexus block. I'm PMR trained and that was something we never learned in my pain fellowship. I can look it up though. That's how I get by with my US guided blocks
No worries! The only reason I have experience with the superficial cervical plexus block is because I did them preoperatively as an anesthesia resident for central line placement on my cardiac rotation. I never did any during my pain fellowship though.
Accupuncture is an interesting modality. It's definitely an "operator dependent" treatment. In the right hands, it can accomplish the seemingly impossible. At least, that's been my experience at my current institution, where we have a particularly talented accupuncturist.
I vaguely remember a video during my anesthesiology residency, which showed a patient undergoing cardiac surgery without any anesthesia, just accupuncture. The patient didn't even flinch during the sternotomy! How crazy is that?
Let's face it: allopathic medicine, as great as it is in many respects, can't explain everything. It reminds me of Kuhn's famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. We try so hard to fit things into conceptual boxes, but sometimes (despite the best efforts of scientists), certain phenomena cannot be explained by modern science. If anything, the practice of medicine is a very humbling profession. There's so much that we don't know. So many imperfections, shortcomings, and erroneous practices.
One of my favorite professors in medical school, a pathologist, once told me: "Fifty percent of what you're going to learn in medical school is wrong. The problem is that we don't know which fifty percent that is."
