Correctly Treat Female Dysmenorrhea

Name: Sheela.

Sex: Female.

Age: 18 years.

0ccupation: college student.

The patient got a pain in the right lower abdomen without any obvious causes. It's a paroxysmal dull pain and occurred sometimes mildly and sometimes severely. It wasn't accompanied with nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea and so on, bull there were dizziness, fatigue and lassitude. Shen went to the hospital for treatment.But the symptoms couldn't be relieved yet. Then she went to our hospital on July 12,2007.

Physical Examination: The patient was weak with a pale lusterless complexion. The pulse was thready and soggy, the tongue was pale with a thin layer of white fur. The heart and lungs were all normal. The abdomen was soft and flat, there was tenderness in the right lower abdomen, there weren't rebound tenderness and muscular tension. Result of gynecological exami-nation were all normal.

Diagnosis : Dysmenorrhea.

Differentiation: This disease, in TCM, belongs to the category of "TongJing"(dysmenorrhea). It's postmenstrual dysmenorrheal of deficiency type. Usually there are 3 types of dysmenorrhea, they are premenstrual type, intermenstrual type and postmen-strual type. The premenstrual type is mainly due to stagnation of qi and its therapeutic principle is soothing liver to activating qi; the intermenstrual type is mainly due to blood stasis and its therapeutic principle is activating blood to resolve stasis; the postmenstrual type is mainly due to deficiency of blood usually and its therapeutic principle is nourishing Yin and blood. This case just belongs to dysmenorrhea of postmenstral type. It's caused by asthenia of heart and spleen, the deficiency of heart-qi could directly cause the flowing of blood became slow and unsmooth, the deficiency of spleen qi could cause there appeared a failure of spleen to control the blood. So that the asthenia of heart and spleen caused the internal organs couldn't be nourished well as normal and then there appeared an abdominal pain. Usually such pain is a dull pain and occurring inter-mittently, it should be distinguished from the abdominal pain resulting from " intestinal carbuncle" ( acute appendicitis ) in clinical work. The abdominal pain resulting from intestinal carbuncle is a sharp prickling pain, usually accompanied with fever, nausea and so on.

Therapeutic Principle: Relieving the secondary symptom in the acute stage: stopping the abdominal pain quickly with accupuncture; curing the primary symptom in the chronic stage: after the pain was relieved, using some qi-invigorating drugs, heart and spleen nourishing drugs and blood nourishing drugs in order to cure the disease completely.

Recipe: Modified Decoction for Invigorating Spleen and Nourishing the Heart.

Acupuncture Method: The acupuncture expert pricked the right point of Zhongdu (LR6) with a 1.5cun needle, manipulating the needle with heat producing skill. The abdominal pain was relieved immediately by such skillful acupuncture.

Effect Observation: After taking the decoction, she came back and told us the abdominal pain had disappeared already. She felt she was energetic very much. Then she was told to take the pills for invigorating spleen and nourishing the heart in order to reinforce the curative effect. The treatment lasted about two weeks.