Abstract
It’s a question I get asked often since I joined the Medical Acupuncture journal team 4 years ago. I always answer with a smile and explain how many new friends and contacts I’ve made who are American Academy of Medical Acupuncture (AAMA) members and how I enjoy seeing everyone at the annual symposium.
The annual AAMA symposium is one of my favorite conferences of the year. The content is a combination of clinical workshops and reports of data collected from research studies. The presenters are a mix of AAMA board-certified MD/DO’s and National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM)-certified LAc’s. The attendees are kind, compassionate, and brilliant doctors and scholars who are genuinely passionate about the art of classical traditional Chinese medicine.
This year’s AAMA conference was held in Pittsburgh, PA, in March, and it was fabulous. Presentations included Japanese palpation-based acupuncture and “hara” diagnosis, hormone optimization in a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) setting, integrating acupuncture and manual therapy, and mechanisms and prediction of acupuncture efficacy in chronic pain patients, expertly presented by Richard Harris PhD, LAc.
The highlight of the symposium for me was the beautiful tribute to the late Dr. Richard Niemtzow, who passed this year in January. Drs. Joe Helms, Arnyce Pock, and Joe Audette spoke from the heart about losing a dear friend. Their combined courage in expressing their emotions provided an opportunity for all attendees to grieve together. It was very special. Richard was loved by so many people.
In this issue of Medical Acupuncture, we feature four articles written by presenters of the 2024 AAMA conference that highlight the work they presented last year. Lisa Taylor Swanson, PhD, LAc, prepared an overview of menopause information and acupuncture therapy approaches to symptom management. Helene Langevin, MD, crafted an article on acupuncture points in research, past, present, and future; C.T. Tang, MD wrote about structure-based medical acupuncture; and Joe Audette, MD, prepared an article on Fascial Nodal Point trigger point needling.
In addition to articles in the AAMA collection, we feature: a scoping review on acupuncture for insomnia, clinical research on auriculotherapy for postoperative pain following rotator cuff surgery, acupuncture for improvement of nasolabial fold, a data mining study on acupoint selection for gouty arthritis, and a report on spinal cord response to changes in the pain threshold of tissues following electroacupuncture.
The editors of Medical Acupuncture thank all of the editorial board members, authors, and reviewers whose combined effort produces valuable content for our readers.
—Jennifer A.M. Stone, MSOM, LAc
Editor-in-Chief