Acupuncture and dentistry

Acupuncture is one of the best known complementary therapies in Traditional Chinese medicine and has a history of more than 2500 years. Acupuncture stimulates the nervous system and shifts the perception of pain signals and also releases natural painkillers, such as endorphins and serotonin.
Aim: Main aim of this article is to review related articles that have focused on acupuncture and its applications in dentistry. The other objective is to maintain a quick sketch of acupuncture use in dentistry for dental clinicians and to encourage them to use acupuncture with the knowledge of its advantages and disadvantagesDental clinicians have to be familiar with the applications of acupuncture for dental disorders because its successful use for dental conditions has been proven.
A detailed search was performed to identify systematic reviews and research/original and review articles, using PUBMED, EBSCO, GOOGLE SCHOLAR and CDSR from 1990 to 2017 in both languages English and Persian to clarify the application of acupuncture in dentistry.
Various studies have shown that acupuncture can be used to manage wide range of disorders in dentistry such as dental pain, altering pain threshold, myofascial pain, temporomandibular disorders, gag reflex, dental anxiety, chronic muscle pain or spasm, TMD , Atypical facial pain, Headache (tension headache, migraine), (dry mouth), Nerve pain (neuralgia, especially trigeminal neuralgia, neuropathic pain, nerve injury), Paresthesia or anesthesia of the oral and perioral structures. However acupuncture's ability as dental analgesia or controlling post operative pain after dental surgery as a single therapy is questionable.
On the systemic review of acupuncture-associated articles in Cochrane library, previously effective acupuncture therapy lacks adequate evidences, which may be related to the low quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in this context.