Eighty four clinical observations of the use of moxibustion in the rectification of breech positioned fetuses.

Liao Qiao Xia, Ling River hospital,  Fujian province, Yan City People’s hospital.

                   Translation by Cedar Learner

            Breech positioned pregnancy is a commonly seen birth abnormality. Linked to infant mortality rates, it has notably higher rates of surgery than cephalic positioned natural births. Correction and reduction of breech presenting fetuses can reduce both infant mortality and surgery. In 1997 our hospital performed Moxabustion to correct breech positioned pregnancies and our methods and results appear below.

1 Data

  Ultrasound was performed in order to ensure that there were no other diseases present and that breech presentation was the only complication. All pregnancies were between 28 and 36 weeks, of which there were 84 cases.

2 Methodology

Before rotating the fetus, the pregnant woman was instructed to empty her bladder then lay on her right side, relax her whole body and loosen her trousers and belt. With both of her legs bent we put a moxa cone more or less the size of a peanut on the little toe of her left foot at acupuncture point UB-67 (zhi yin xue), ignited and burned the moxa. The moxa was not allowed to burn all the way down thereby causing the woman any pain. Immediately the moxa was replaced using a total of three cones. After burning the moxa, we rotated the woman onto her left side and burned another 3 cones on her right foot at UB-67. One treatment consisted of three cones on each foot, once per day. Without precisely duplicating the point, this procedure can be carried out continuously (for several days) The fetus is rotated from front to back and at this time it is important to monitor the fetal heart beat.  After rectifying the breech position the pregnant woman should be treated at regular intervals with visits and observation until delivery.

3 Results

 Clinical success rate of moxa in the use of shifting fetal position:

Table 1: success rate of fetal rotation at varying gestational weeks:

There is no obvious difference of success rates among varying gestational weeks, the table clearly shows fetal rotation among varying gestational weeks obtaining equal results.

4 Discussion

            Upon examining the results of fetal rotation, the success rate between treatment frequencies of one to three times is relatively high. Among successful treatments after one time the success rate was 30%, success after two treatments was 58.3%, and success after three treatments was 10%, while more than 3 times had a success rate of 1.7%. There was one example of a successful fetal rotation which returned to breech position after two weeks. Upon performing moxa twice more, the fetus was successfully rotated to normal position comprising a total of 1.1%. The success rate was higher for relaxed abdominal walls than for abdominal walls that were tight. At present there is no determined standard to measure the degree of abdominal wall elasticity, but one way is palpation of the e space between the fetus and the woman and to distinguish whether the fetus is notably free to move around, in which case this is a relaxed abdominal wall. If there is no obvious sense of free movement then this is a tight abdominal wall.  In this article there are 84 cases of which 44 cases had relaxed abdominal walls while 40 cases had tight abdominal walls. The former had a success rate of 95.4% while the latter had a success rate of 65.0%. Within these two exists a striking difference indicating that a breech positioned fetus within relaxed abdominal walls is relatively easy to correct and this probably has something to do with the relative ease with which the fetus moves within the uterine cavity. Success rates were higher among those women with larger amounts of amniotic fluid compared to those with les amniotic fluid.

     Women who used moxa had no side effects, no discomfort and no negative reactions. Turning the fetus in no case caused fetal death.