---
title: "Auricular point code collisions"
url: "https://acuiq.com/wiki/research/codes-are-not-identifiers"
updated: 2026-10-12
last_verified: 2026-10-12
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
section: "research"
basis: "Modern research"
audience: "Anyone"
published: "2026-07-26"
reading_minutes: 9
sources: 22
---

# Auricular point code collisions

_Published ear-point codes carry no scheme, so one code names different points in different nomenclatures. AcuiQ counted how often that misread its corpus._

In July 2026 AcuiQ audited every acupuncture point reference it had extracted from the literature and found published ear-point codes resolving to a different point in its catalogue. A paper that writes TF4 means Shenmen 神門, in the numbering of China’s national standard. Our catalogue files Shenmen at `TF10` and gives `TF04` to the Decrease Blood Pressure Point. Nothing raised an error, because `TF04` is a real point.

## A unit lost in transit

In 1999 NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter. A ground software file supplied thruster performance data in English units where the software it fed required metric units, according to the [mishap investigation board](https://llis.nasa.gov/llis_lib/pdf/1009464main1_0641-mr.pdf), and over the 9-month journey the error put the spacecraft about 170 km lower than planned as it reached Mars. It was either destroyed in the atmosphere or left Mars for heliocentric space.

A code that cannot be resolved raises an error, and someone sees it. A code that resolves to the wrong thing raises nothing and returns a plausible result, across every row that carries it.

## How the codes collide

AcuiQ maintains a catalogue of 773 acupuncture points and reads treatment protocols out of the published literature at scale. Both the catalogue and the literature label auricular points with a region prefix and a number. Both use the prefixes AH, AT, TF and HX. They do not agree on what the numbers mean.

China’s [GB/T 13734-2008](https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=71F772D76DAED3A7E05397BE0A0AB82A) divides each region of the ear into numbered zones and builds a code from the region’s two-letter abbreviation and the number of the zone the point sits in: TF4 is zone 4 of the triangular fossa, and AT1 zone 1 of the antitragus. A lower-case suffix places a point within or between zones: i where two zones meet, a at a zone’s front end, and p, l and u at its back, lower and upper edges, so AH6a, Sympathetic, sits at the front end of antihelix zone 6. The WFAS standard of 2013 uses the same codes and, according to a [2016 comparison](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eujim.2016.06.011) by two of the Chinese standard’s drafters, rests mainly on it. [Our catalogue](/wiki/nomenclature/point-codes) keeps its own numbering under some of the same prefixes, so a code copied from a paper resolves here to a different point:

| Published code | What the author meant | What it resolved to |
| --- | --- | --- |
| TF4 | Shenmen 神門 | Decrease Blood Pressure Point 降壓點 |
| AT4 | Subcortex 皮質下 | Parotid 腮腺 |
| AT3 | Occiput 枕 | Vertex 頂 |
| AH9 | Lumbar spine 腰 | Lumbar Muscles Area 腰骶椎外側腰肌區 |

Every paper that wrote TF4 for Shenmen, the point in the triangular fossa, was read as prescribing the catalogue’s Decrease Blood Pressure Point.

The names have moved as well as the codes. Annex D of [GB/T 13734-2008](https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=71F772D76DAED3A7E05397BE0A0AB82A) lists, for each point, the names earlier Chinese books gave the same place. The 1958 Chinese translation of Nogier’s chart put the knee where the standard now puts the hip (AH5), and the abdomen where it puts the lumbosacral spine (AH9). Earlier texts also exchanged chest and thoracic spine (AH10 and AH11) and neck and cervical spine (AH12 and AH13). Three points have carried the name eye: Eye 眼 (LO5) on the lobe, and Eye 1 and Eye 2 (目1, 目2) beside the intertragic notch, which the standard renamed Anterior and Posterior intertragic notch (TG2l and AT1l). A paper that names its points but not its chart can be misread the same way a bare code is.

## What the corpus says

The figures below were counted in July 2026 from the extraction journal, the file (`protocols.csv`) each extracted protocol is written to before it reaches the database, one line per protocol. The script that counted them was not kept, and the journal has changed since, so the counts cannot be re-derived from it today.

| Point references in the journal, July 2026 | 48,579 |
| --- | --- |
| Journal lines, July 2026 | 18,838 |
| Lines carrying a scheme collision | 23 |
| References that resolved to a different real point | 37 |
| References dropped as unresolvable | 60 |

Each dropped reference raised an error; the misread ones raised none, so a fix aimed only at the errors would have left every misread reference in place.

Of the nine open-access papers the crosswalk below was read from, three named a nomenclature: [one](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12271432/) the WFAS standard, [one](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6658225/) the Chinese standard alongside Nogier’s European system, and [one](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3523683/) the Chinese standard for where the concha points sit. [Another](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9072178/) coded subcortex AT5 where the others have AT4, and mouth IC6 where the others have CO1.

## The existing standards

Acupuncture already has several point standards. The World Health Organization published [standard point locations](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/353407) in 2008. China maintains [GB/T 12346-2021](https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=D1E86BE73ADD430EE05397BE0A0A206B) for channel points and [GB/T 13734-2008](https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=71F772D76DAED3A7E05397BE0A0AB82A) for auricular points. The World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies (WFAS) publishes [its own](https://doi.org/10.1016/s1003-5257(13)60055-0). [ISO/TC 249](https://www.iso.org/committee/598435.html), whose [SC 1](https://www.iso.org/committee/10892726.html) subcommittee took over its Chinese-medicine work in March 2025, has published no auricular point nomenclature.

A further standard would add one more scheme for each paper to choose from. The codes lose their meaning in citation: a paper prints a code without the scheme it comes from.

## Two fixes

The first is a prefix. Write WFAS:TF4 or GBT13734:TF4 rather than TF4. A journal can adopt this in a style guide and a reviewer can ask for it in a comment, and a machine can then resolve the code without guessing.

The Lyon working group used the same fix in 1990. It agreed the ear region codes with a prefix: MA-TF, MA-AT, MA-AH, MA-HX, where MA is derived from micro-system and auricular point. The literature kept the two letters and the number and dropped the MA, the part that said whose scheme a code belonged to.

Lyon adopted one point in the triangular fossa, MA-TF1, and it was Shenmen. In the numbering the source papers below follow, TF1 is [Jiaowoshang](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8292057/), the superior triangular fossa, and Shenmen is TF4. Our catalogue files Shenmen at `TF10`. Without the MA, a WHO working group’s list and the Chinese national standard use the same code, TF1, for different points.

One code also names three points. Lyon’s [MA-AH9](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/60870) is the neck. The AH9 in the papers below is the [lumbar spine](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12271432/). Our catalogue’s `AH09` is the lumbar muscle area beside it.

The second fix is a conversion table, and we built one. It is published below and as [a JSON file](/data/auricular-crosswalk-v1.json) under CC BY 4.0. It maps auricular codes as the WFAS and GB/T 13734-2008 standards print them onto the AcuiQ catalogue, and every row names the article it was read from and the Chinese name it was matched on. We built it by reading each source paper in full and taking the author’s own pairing of name and code. The first summary we consulted gave TF4 as the sympathetic point, which the papers contradict; each row therefore names the paper it was read from.

23 mappings came out of that: 21 traced to a printed pairing of name and code in an open-access paper, and 2 read from the text of GB/T 13734-2008 at the section given. Codes we could not match to a printed name are not in the table.

| Published as | AcuiQ | Point | Read from | Collides |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CO1 | `HCS03` | Mouth 口 | [PMC4261582](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4261582/) | no |
| CO4 | `CYC01` | Stomach 胃 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| CO6 | `CYC03` | Small Intestine 小腸 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| CO7 | `CYC05` | Large Intestine 大腸 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| CO10 | `CYC11` | Kidney 腎 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| CO12 | `CYC08` | Liver 肝 | [PMC8292057](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8292057/) | no |
| CO13 | `CVC06` | Spleen 脾 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| CO14 | `CVC02` | Lung 肺 | [PMC8710762](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8710762/), named from GB/T 13734-2008 §4.7.19 | no |
| CO15 | `CVC01` | Heart 心 | [PMC3523683](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3523683/) | no |
| CO17 | `CVC09` | San Jiao 三焦 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| CO18 | `IN01` | Endocrine 內分泌 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| HX1 | `HCS02` | Ear Center 耳中 | [PMC4261582](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4261582/) | yes – was read as HX01, a different helix point |
| LO5 | `EL10` | Eye 眼 | GB/T 13734-2008 §4.8.5 | no |
| TF1 | `TF04` | Decrease Blood Pressure Point 降壓點 | [PMC8292057](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8292057/) | yes – was read as TF01 Adnexa |
| TF4 | `TF10` | Shenmen 神門 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | yes – was read as TF04 Decrease Blood Pressure Point |
| TEF3 | `TF10` | Shenmen 神門 | [PMC7695492](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7695492/) | no |
| AH6a | `IAC03` | Sympathetic 交感 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | no |
| AH9 | `AH03` | Lumbar 腰 | [PMC12271432](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12271432/) | yes – was read as AH09 Lumbar Muscles Area 腰骶椎外側腰肌區 – the paraspinal muscle zone, not the vertebrae |
| AT3 | `AT07` | Occiput 枕 | [PMC8292057](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8292057/) | yes – was read as AT03 Vertex |
| AT4 | `AT12` | Nervous Subcortex 皮質下 | [PMC11668611](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/) | yes – was read as AT04 Parotid |
| AT1 | `AT05` | Forehead 額 | [PMC6658225](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6658225/) | yes – was read as AT01 Stop Asthma |
| AT5 * | `AT12` | Nervous Subcortex 皮質下 | [PMC9072178](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9072178/) | yes – was read as AT05 Forehead |
| IC6 * | `HCS03` | Mouth 口 | [PMC9072178](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9072178/) | no |

* Holds only for the paper it was read from, which numbers the point differently from the other sources. Version 1.0.3, 23 rows.

One category was our own gap. We had been dropping every reference to the scalp acupuncture lines, MS1 through MS14, because no catalogue we held contained them. The revised WHO nomenclature of 1991 standardised them: [part 1](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/207635) fixed the 361 classical points, and [part 2](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/207637) the 8 extra meridians, 48 extra points and 14 scalp lines. Our catalogue lacked them, and they have now been imported.

The 1991 WHO nomenclature contains no auricular points. A WHO working group met in Lyon in November 1990 and [adopted 39 ear points](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/60870), listed a further 36 as not yet considered, and recommended that WHO organise a subcommittee to map the external ear and name its zones and points. WHO has published no auricular nomenclature since. China [issued GB/T 13734 in 1992](https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=71F772D76DAED3A7E05397BE0A0AB82A), under two years after Lyon, and revised it in 2008; WFAS published STANDARD-002:2012 in 2013.

## What happens next

The crosswalk is versioned and takes new rows as papers are read. A journal or reviewer can ask for the prefix (WFAS:TF4) today.

Corrections are welcome and will be credited. If a mapping here is wrong, we would rather know.

### Sources

1. WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region, 2008 — https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/353407
2. ISO/TC 249, Traditional medicine — https://www.iso.org/committee/598435.html
3. ISO/TC 249/SC 1, Traditional Chinese medicine — https://www.iso.org/committee/10892726.html
4. WHO Standard Acupuncture Nomenclature, part 2, rev. ed., 1991 — https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/207637
5. WHO/TRM/91.2, Report on the Working Group on Auricular Acupuncture Nomenclature, Lyon, France, 28-30 November 1990 — https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/60870
6. Auricular Acupuncture Point (WFAS STANDARD-002:2012), World Journal of Acupuncture-Moxibustion 23(3), 2013 — https://doi.org/10.1016/s1003-5257(13)60055-0
7. GB/T 13734-2008, Nomenclature and location of auricular points, China (replaces the 1992 edition; reviewed 2023, still in force) — https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=71F772D76DAED3A7E05397BE0A0AB82A
8. GB/T 12346-2021, Nomenclature and location of meridian points, China (replaces GB/T 12346-2006) — https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed?id=D1E86BE73ADD430EE05397BE0A0A206B
9. AcuiQ auricular crosswalk 1.0.3, CC BY 4.0 — /data/auricular-crosswalk-v1.json
10. Reading a point code – AcuiQ — /wiki/nomenclature/point-codes
11. Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board, Phase I report, NASA, 1999 — https://llis.nasa.gov/llis_lib/pdf/1009464main1_0641-mr.pdf
12. Darbandi et al., Auricular or body acupuncture: which one is more effective in reducing abdominal fat mass in Iranian men with obesity: a randomized clinical trial, J Diabetes Metab Disord 2014 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4261582/
13. Ou et al., Acupuncture and moxibustion as adjunctive therapy for postoperative gastrointestinal dysfunction in gastric cancer: a systematic review and network meta-analysis, Front Med (Lausanne) 2024 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11668611/
14. Liu et al., Review of Traditional Chinese Medicines for Common Complications Related to Hemodialysis: An Evidence-Based Perspective, Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 2021 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8292057/
15. Wen et al., Acupuncture for Opioid Dependence Patients Receiving Methadone Maintenance Treatment: A Network Meta-Analysis, Front Psychiatry 2021 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8710762/
16. He et al., Auricular acupuncture and vagal regulation, Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 2012 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3523683/
17. Thi et al., Auricular Acupuncture to Lower Blood Pressure Involves the Adrenal Gland in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats, Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 2020 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7695492/
18. Pham et al., Should thread-embedding and auricular acupuncture be combined rather than used individually for non-specific chronic low back pain?: A double-blinded, randomized, sham-controlled trial, Integr Med Res 2025 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12271432/
19. Suen et al., Self-Administered Auricular Acupressure Integrated With a Smartphone App for Weight Reduction: Randomized Feasibility Trial, JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6658225/
20. Chou et al., Acupoint stimulation improves pain and quality of life in head and neck cancer patients with chemoradiotherapy: A randomized controlled trial, Asia Pac J Oncol Nurs 2022 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9072178/
21. WHO Standard Acupuncture Nomenclature, part 1, rev. ed., 1991 — https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/207635
22. Wang L, Yang J, Zhao B, Zhou L, Wirz-Ridolfi A, The similarities between the World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies’ standards for auricular acupuncture points and the European system of auriculotherapy points according to Nogier and Bahr, Eur J Integr Med 2016 — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eujim.2016.06.011