The Korean Acupuncture and Moxibustion Medicine Society (KAMMS) celebrated its 50th anniversary with a commemoration ceremony and a Japan-Korea Symposium held in Seoul in November 2023. This report outlines the participation and highlights from the commemoration ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of KAMMS on November 11 (Saturday), along with insights shared during the Japan-Korea Symposium held as a special session within KAMMS' Fall Academic Conference 2023 on November 12 (Sunday). The summary includes presentations delivered by four speakers during the symposium. The Korean session focused on "Collaborative-Based Integrated Healthcare," discussing endeavors in integrated medicine involving Western medicine and Korean medicine. Meanwhile, the Japanese session titled "Introduction of Acupuncture Clinics in Japanese University Hospital" highlighted efforts in acupuncture and moxibustion education within the Tohoku University Hospital in Japan.

Usually, chronic pain is difficult to treat because this is often accompanied by none-organic factors such as psychiatric symptoms, which complicate the pathological condition. For this reason, the guidelines also call for coping with peripheral symptoms except pain. This time, we report that facial pain as well as peripheral symptoms such as mental anxiety gradually improved by a combination of decoction extract and acupuncture and moxibustion. The case was a man in his 60s, who received all kinds of treatments such as taking Western medicines and blocking trigger points for chronic facial pain of unknown cause with mental anxiety. However, even after one year the side effects were strong and the treatment was ineffective. Acupuncturists and Kampo specialists made the diagnosis and treatment based on a common concept of Kampo medicine. Treatment focused on shin abnormalities and oketsu suppressed the vicious cycle of pain and improved psychiatric symptoms and QOL. It was suggested that Kampo medicine based on the idea “the same in mind and body” is effective for chronic pain in which various symptoms are intricately intertwined.

The Japan-Korea Symposium was held on Saturday, May 25th, 2024 as a special program in the 73rd Conference of the Japan Society of Acupuncture and Moxibustion in Miyagi. The topic of the symposium was "The Collaborative Education and Treatment utilizing Acupuncture", which was introduced previously at the Korea-Japan Symposium during the 50th Anniversary Ceremony of the Korean Acupuncture and Moxibustion Medicine Society (KAMMS) in Seoul, Korea in November, 2023. In this article, we summarize the overview of the symposium.

[Objective] We report a successfully treated case by a combined therapy of acupuncture and Kampo medicine for a patient with lower limb pain associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS).[Case] The patient was a 74-year-old man whose chief complaints were severe lower limb pain, gait difficulty, and hyposthenia. Clinical history: In late September in X year, the patient had a cold infection. On October 14, he became aware of weakness in his lower limbs on both sides, difficulty in walking, and severe pain in his lower limbs. He visited our hospital's general internal medicine department and was diagnosed with GBS. The patient was hospitalized and started to receive intravenous immunoglobulin therapy for GBS. Since pain in the lower limbs continued after treatment, he received analgesics, which was not effective. Therefore, acupuncture treatment was started on October 30 aiming to alleviate lower limb pain. Evaluation: Pain and burning sensation were evaluated using a numerical rating scale (NRS), and Hughes' function grade scale (FG) as an objective evaluation. [Acupuncture treatment] The acupuncture treatment was based on Chinese medicine. The basic combination of meridian points for treatment of the case were LR3 (Taichong), LI4 (Hegu), KI6 (Zhaohai), KI3 (Taixi), ST36 (Zusanli), PC6 (Neiguan), and SI8 (Xiaohai). The patient received acupuncture treatments once a day for 12 weeks.[Progress] The first evaluation of the patient's pain in his lower limbs on both sides was 10 points in NRS and 4 units in FG. Pain was alleviated immediately after acupuncture treatment was started, and a significant improvement in pain was observed by the seventh acupuncture treatment. However, the　patient started to complain of burning sensation on his soles. Therefore, the combined use of Kampo medicine (Choutousan, Rokumijiougan) were introduced in addition to the acupuncture treatment, and his burning sensation disappeared. Since then, rehabilitation was enhanced, and after three months from the start of acupuncture treatment, he was discharged since the FG was improved to 2 units. [Discussion] Lower limb pain and burning sensation in this case were considered to be neuropathic pain associated with GBS, and conventional analgesics were only temporarily effective. In contrast, the combined use of acupuncture and Kampo medicine alleviated the pain and burning sensation, and ADL was improved. Acupuncture and Kampo medicine were effective for lower limb pain and burning sensation from GBS.

The 73rd Annual Meeting of the Japan Society of Acupuncture and Moxibustion was held in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. The symposium "Disaster and Acupuncture and Moxibustion" was held on May 26, 2024, included presentations on the following topics: Disaster and Traditional Medicine (Kampo medicine, acupuncture and moxibustion); support for the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent efforts as a business organization,; the potential of acupuncture and moxibustion to expand through long-term support for disaster relief; the challenges of disaster acupuncture and moxibustion; the non-technical and technical skills required in disaster areas. Finally, we discussed issues and future prospects for disaster-related acupuncture and moxibustion massage. In Japan, where the frequency of natural disasters is relatively high, disaster relief activities are one of the acupuncture and moxibustion activities that can contribute to addressing social issues. This report summarizes the contents of this symposium.

A 70-year-old woman was diagnosed with peripheral T-cell lymphoma and received chemotherapy. She developed chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), and her chief complaint was numbness of her fingertips and toes. However, the symptoms did not change even 9 months after the chemotherapy was completed. Our Kampo diagnosis was dual deficiency of qi (ki) and blood. Hence, we applied pedestal moxibustions to the following acupuncture points : SP 6 (Sanyinjiao), Ex-LE 10 (Bafeng), Ex-UE 9 (Baxie), CV 4 (Guanyuan). Her symptoms improved rapidly after moxibustion treatment. There were neither adverse events nor relapse of the numbness. Moxibustion treatment might reduce symptoms of CIPN.

In recent years, internationalization of East Asian traditional medicine is progressing, as evidenced by the inclusion of a chapter on traditional medicine in the 11th revision of the WHO’s International Classification, and the standardization of East Asian traditional medicine in ISO which has been promoted mainly in China. It is also important for Kampo medicine, to disseminate information overseas. In these streams, both the Editing Committee for Dictionary (Jun, 2016-Jun, 2020) and the Editing Committee for Kampo Medicine literature (Jun, 2020-Jun, 2023) were able to publish “The Dictionary of Kampo Medicine―Basic terms” in 2020 and “Complete Kampo Medicine (Japanese version)” in 2022. In publishing the “Complete Kampo Medicine,” it was useful to quote the underlying description of the “Introduction to Kampo (Japanese version)” published in 2002 by our Association and the “Textbook of Japanese Traditional Medicine” published in 2012 created in the team with a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The next steps for this committee are to expand and revise the “Dictionary of Kampo Medicine” and to translate “Complete Kampo Medicine” into English. We believe that by publishing these textbooks, we will be able to more powerfully prevailing Kampo medicine to the world.