Glossary

This glossary defines the terms used across AcuiQ and its wiki, each in a sentence or two, and points to the page that covers it. Terms from traditional Chinese medicine follow the WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region, published in 2007, which gives an English term, the Chinese characters and a definition for each. Research terms follow the glossary of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body that writes clinical guidance for England. Where a definition rests on another source, the entry names it. Terms marked as AcuiQ’s describe how this index records and labels its entries, and the linked pages explain them in full.

The definitions of traditional terms report how the tradition describes itself, the way the WHO terminology does: a statement that qi gathers at a point is the tradition’s account, not a finding. What trials have measured is on the evidence pages.

Terms

A

• Acupressure – Pressing points with the fingers or a device instead of inserting needles; AcuiQ records it as a modality of its own. See Acupressure.
• Acupuncture – The insertion of needles into the body for remedial purposes, or the methods for doing so (WHO terminology). See Needling and de qi.
• Acupuncture point – A point where a needle is inserted and manipulated (WHO terminology). The WHO counts 361 classical points on the fourteen channels. See Reading a point code, The channel system, counted.
• Adverse event – Any unwanted event during or after a treatment, whether or not the treatment caused it (NICE glossary). See After a treatment.
• Ashi point – A point with no name and no fixed location, found where pressure is tender; the WHO terminology calls it an ouch point (WHO terminology). See Extra points.
• Auricular acupuncture – Acupuncture at points on the outer ear, also called ear acupuncture (WHO terminology). See Ear acupuncture.

B

• B-cun – Proportional cun: a span between two landmarks divided into a set number of equal parts, each one cun (WHO terminology). See Measuring in cun.
• Back-shu point – A point on the back where the qi of an internal organ is said to be infused; the WHO terminology calls it a transport point (WHO terminology). See Back-shu and front-mu points.
• Bias – A systematic, not random, distortion of a study’s result caused by how it was designed or run (NICE glossary). See Reading an acupuncture trial.
• Blinding – Keeping participants, practitioners or assessors from knowing which group a participant is in, so they cannot sway the result; also called masking (NICE glossary). See Sham acupuncture.
• Bloodletting – Piercing a superficial vein, usually with a three-edged needle, to let out a small amount of blood (WHO terminology). See Bloodletting.

C

• Canonical concept – On AcuiQ, the one symptom term that variant spellings and synonyms resolve to, so that each concept has one page. See Patterns, symptoms and what you can look up.
• Case report, case series – A report of one patient, or of several with the same condition, with no comparison group (NICE glossary). AcuiQ’s text or case report kind covers case reports cited by name. See How AcuiQ is built.
• Channel – See meridian.
• Cleft point (xi-cleft) – A point where the qi of a channel is said to gather deeply (WHO terminology). See Source, connecting and cleft points.
• Cochrane review – A systematic review produced by Cochrane, an international organisation that reviews the evidence on health interventions, and published in the Cochrane Library (NICE glossary). See Evidence maps.
• Conception vessel – One of the eight extra meridians, running up the front midline from the perineum to below the lower lip; coded CV (WHO terminology). See The extraordinary vessels.
• Confidence interval – A range of values likely to include the true effect; a wide one signals an uncertain estimate, often from a small study (NICE glossary). See Reading an acupuncture trial.
• Confluent points – The points where the main channels are said to communicate with the eight extra meridians (WHO terminology). See Influential and confluent points.
• Contraindication – Any condition that makes a treatment inappropriate (WHO terminology). On AcuiQ, cautions of this kind appear as warnings on point pages. See Reading a point warning.
• Control group – The group in a study that does not have the treatment being tested and has usual care, a placebo or nothing instead (NICE glossary). See Reading an acupuncture trial.
• Course length – On AcuiQ, the calendar span over which a source gave its sessions, in days or weeks. See Reading a protocol.
• Cun – The unit of acupuncture point location. It is proportional, a fraction of the patient’s own body, not a fixed length; the WHO adopted proportional measurement as its standard unit in 1987 (WHO location standard). See Measuring in cun.
• Cupping – Applying suction to the skin with a cup or jar from which the air has been drawn out, usually by fire (WHO terminology). See Cupping.

D

• De qi – Obtaining qi: the patient’s sensation of soreness, numbness, distension or heaviness around a needle, together with the practitioner’s sense of tension around it (WHO terminology). See Needling and de qi.
• Dry needling – Needling aimed at trigger points, sensitive areas that produce a reaction elsewhere in the body when stimulated (WHO terminology). See Dry needling.

E

• Effect size – A measure of how strongly a treatment and an outcome are associated (NICE glossary). See Reading an acupuncture trial.
• Efficacy and effectiveness – Efficacy is how well a treatment works under ideal conditions; effectiveness is how well it works in everyday practice (NICE glossary). See Reading an acupuncture trial.
• Electroacupuncture – Electrical stimulation passed through needles after insertion (WHO terminology). See Electroacupuncture.
• Evidence kind – AcuiQ’s label for the source of an entry: study-reported, text or case report, website, or unsourced. It is worked out from the reference and weights the ranking. See How AcuiQ is built, Reading a protocol.
• Extra point – A named point that is not on the fourteen channels, also called a non-meridian point (WHO terminology). The WHO’s 1991 list names 48 (WHO nomenclature, part 2). See Extra points.
• Extraordinary vessels – The eight extra meridians: the governor, conception, thoroughfare and belt vessels, and the yin and yang heel and link vessels (WHO terminology). See The extraordinary vessels.

F

• Filiform needle – The fine needle, of varying length, used in most acupuncture today (WHO terminology). See Needling and de qi.
• Finger cun – A cun measured on the patient’s own fingers, such as the width of the thumb at its joint (WHO terminology). See Measuring in cun.
• Five phases – Wood, fire, earth, metal and water, and the ways they change and act on each other; also called the five elements (WHO terminology). See The five phases.
• Five transport points – Five points on each of the twelve regular channels below the elbow or knee: the well, spring (brook), stream, river and sea points (WHO terminology). See Five transport points.
• Four examinations – Inspection, listening and smelling, inquiry and palpation, the four ways of gathering information for a diagnosis (WHO terminology). See The four examinations.
• Front-mu point – A point on the chest or abdomen where the qi of an organ is said to concentrate; the WHO terminology calls it an alarm point (WHO terminology). See Back-shu and front-mu points.

G

• Governor vessel – One of the eight extra meridians, running up the back midline over the head to the upper gum; coded GV, and called the governing vessel in AcuiQ’s catalogue (WHO terminology). See The extraordinary vessels.
• GRADE – Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation: a system that rates the certainty of a body of evidence as high, moderate, low or very low, lowered for risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision or publication bias (GRADE handbook). See Reading an acupuncture trial, Clinical guidelines.

H

• He-sea point – The fifth of the five transport points, near the elbow or knee, where a channel’s qi is said to go deep like a river entering the sea (WHO terminology). See Five transport points.
• Heterogeneity – Significant differences in results between the studies in a review, which can come from differences in the people studied, the outcome measures or the definitions used (NICE glossary). See Evidence maps.
• Huangdi Neijing – Huangdi’s Internal Classic, an anonymous Chinese medical classic; the WHO terminology lists the Suwen (Plain Questions) and the Lingshu (Miraculous Pivot) under it (WHO terminology). See The classical texts.

I

• Individual patient data meta-analysis – A meta-analysis that pools the raw data on each participant, obtained from the trial authors, instead of each trial’s published summary; the Acupuncture Trialists’ Collaboration analysed 20,827 patients from 39 chronic pain trials this way. See Chronic pain.
• Influential points – The eight meeting points, where the qi of the viscera, bowels, qi, blood, tendons, vessels, bones and marrow is said to gather (WHO terminology). See Influential and confluent points.
• Intention-to-treat analysis – Analysing every participant in the group they were randomised to, whether or not they completed or kept to the treatment (NICE glossary). See Reading an acupuncture trial.

J

• Jing-well point – The first transport point, at the tip of a finger or toe, where a channel’s qi is said to bubble up (WHO terminology). See Five transport points.

L

• Laser acupuncture – Shining a laser on points in place of a needle (WHO terminology). See Laser acupuncture.
• Lower he-sea points – Points on the three yang channels of the leg that correspond to the six fu organs (WHO terminology). See Influential and confluent points.
• Luo-connecting point – The point where a channel sends out its collateral vessel (WHO terminology). See Source, connecting and cleft points.

M

• Meridian – A conduit through which qi and blood are said to circulate, linking the organs, limbs and body surface; also called a channel (WHO terminology). See The channel system, counted.
• Meta-analysis – A statistical method, often used in a systematic review, that combines the results of several studies of the same treatment into one estimate (NICE glossary). See Evidence maps.
• Modality – On AcuiQ, how a source applied the points: one or more of twelve labels from needling to cupping. See Reading a protocol.
• Moxibustion – Applying heat from burning material, usually moxa made from mugwort, to points or areas of the body (WHO terminology). See Moxibustion.

N

• Needle sickness – Faintness, dizziness, nausea and cold sweating during or after needling (WHO terminology). See Fainting during treatment.
• Needling-prohibited point – A point to which needling must not be applied (WHO terminology). See Pregnancy and the forbidden points.
• Network meta-analysis – An analysis comparing several treatments at once from direct comparisons and indirect ones through a shared comparator (NICE glossary). See Evidence maps.

P

• Pattern – A diagnostic conclusion about the location, cause and nature of a disorder at a given stage; also called a syndrome, zheng in Chinese (WHO terminology). See Patterns, symptoms and what you can look up.
• Pattern identification – The analysis of signs and symptoms that arrives at a pattern; also called syndrome differentiation (WHO terminology). AcuiQ records patterns a source named and does not perform it. See Patterns, symptoms and what you can look up, What AcuiQ does not do.
• Placebo – A dummy treatment that looks like the real one, given to a control group to separate the treatment’s effect from the effect of receiving care (NICE glossary). See Sham acupuncture.
• Point application – Applying a plaster to points or to the affected site (WHO terminology); AcuiQ labels the modality herbal plaster on points. See Point application.
• Point code – A short identifier for a point, such as ST36: a channel abbreviation and an ordinal. AcuiQ pads the ordinal to two digits and uses KD, LV and TB where the WHO uses KI, LR and TE. See Reading a point code.
• Point injection – Injecting a liquid medicine into a point (WHO terminology). See Point injection.
• Press needle – A small needle left embedded in the skin at a point for an extended period, such as a thumbtack needle (WHO terminology). See Press needles.
• Protocol – On AcuiQ, one entry: the set of points a named source used together for a complaint, with how they were delivered and the citation. A source that named one point gives a single-point entry instead. See Reading a protocol.
• Publication bias – Distortion that arises when studies with positive results are published and those without are not (NICE glossary). See Where the trials come from.

Q

• Qi – In the classical theory, the basic element of everything, and in medicine both a refined nutritive substance flowing in the body and its functional activity (WHO terminology). See Qi, blood and body fluids.

R

• Randomised controlled trial (RCT) – A study that assigns similar people at random to two or more groups, one having the treatment being tested and the others an alternative, a placebo or nothing (NICE glossary). See Reading an acupuncture trial.

S

• Scalp acupuncture – Needling along specific lines on the scalp (WHO terminology). The WHO standardised 14 scalp lines in 1991 (part 2). See Scalp acupuncture.
• Sessions – On AcuiQ, the number of treatments a source gave. See Reading a protocol.
• Sham acupuncture – A control procedure made to look like acupuncture, used as a placebo (NICE glossary). The 2018 individual patient data meta-analysis found smaller effects in trials whose sham pierced the skin. See Sham acupuncture.
• Single-point entry – An AcuiQ entry naming one point, because its source named one. It ranks below every multi-point entry. See How AcuiQ is built.
• Source point (yuan-source) – A point where the original qi of an organ is said to pour, pass or stay (WHO terminology). See Source, connecting and cleft points.
• STRICTA – Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture: a checklist of 6 items and 17 sub-items describing the acupuncture a trial gave, published in 2010 as an extension of CONSORT (MacPherson and colleagues). See Reading an acupuncture trial, Reading a protocol.
• Study-reported – AcuiQ’s evidence kind for an entry whose reference is a DOI or a PubMed, PubMed Central or Europe PMC link. It says the source can be opened, not what kind of study it was. See How AcuiQ is built, Reading a protocol.
• Systematic review – A review that answers a defined question by a planned, explicit method of finding, selecting, appraising and summarising studies, with or without meta-analysis (NICE glossary). See Evidence maps.

T

• TEAS – Transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation: current applied through pads on the skin over points, without needles. AcuiQ labels it electrical stimulation on the skin. See Electroacupuncture.
• Thread embedding – Implanting a short length of absorbable thread, such as catgut, at a point. See Thread embedding.
• Triple burner – The sixth of the six fu organs, also called the triple energizer or sanjiao; its channel is coded TB on AcuiQ and TE by the WHO (WHO terminology). See The zang-fu organs.

Y

• Yin and yang – Two opposite, complementary and related forces found in all things, whose continual motion produces change (WHO terminology). See Yin and yang.
• Ying-spring point – The second transport point, mostly just beyond the knuckles of the hand or foot, where a channel’s qi is said to start to spout; the WHO terminology calls it a brook point (WHO terminology). See Five transport points.

Z

• Zang-fu – The internal organs: the five zang (heart, liver, spleen, lung and kidney), which form and store essence and qi, and the six fu (gallbladder, stomach, large and small intestine, bladder and triple burner), which receive and pass on food (WHO terminology). See The zang-fu organs.