According to the statistics of the National Health Insurance Administration Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of patients about gastroesophageal reflux disease has increased from 610,000 to over 760,000 in the past three years (2016-2018). Western medicine mainly uses proton pump inhibitors to improve symptoms. For patients who are ineffective in drug treatment, it will be treated by surgical treatment (Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication, endoluminal gastroplication).~However, it is easy to cause problems such as difficulty swallowing or recurrence postoperatively. In recent years, more and more integrated treatment studies of Chinese and Western medicine have found that acupuncture can improve the refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease and can provide patients with another non-surgical treatment. Traditional acupuncture is mainly based on distinguishing diseases (mainly according to Western medicine disease diagnosis, to perform acupoint selection.), dialectics and verification (based on clinical experience, some stimulation areas with outstanding effects on certain symptoms are selected for acupuncture). These methods are used as the standard for acupoint selection. This research plan intends to use scalp and ear acupuncture to identify diseases and select points for verification. Combined with the basics of western medicine, embryology and neurophysiology, the investigators will further explore what is the mechanism of acupuncture to improve the symptoms in patients with refractory gastroesophageal reflux. If this mechanism can be clarified, it will reduce the patient's overuse of drugs and the cost of surgery in the future, which will be a big boon for Taiwanese health and finances of health insurance.
According to the statistics of the National Health Insurance Administration Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of patients about gastroesophageal reflux disease has increased from 610,000 to over 760,000 in the past three years (2016-2018). Western medicine mainly uses proton pump inhibitors to improve symptoms. For patients who are ineffective in drug treatment, it will be treated by surgical treatment (Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication, endoluminal gastroplication).