Construction and validation of an acupuncture protocol for reducing facial wrinkles

Introduction: Notes that, there are very few studies about the aesthetic acupuncture which include the description of the protocol used. In the face of this situation decided to create protocol with acupuncture points that have action on the frontal, glabella and ocular regions, strengthening their tonus or relaxing their fibers when there is facial muscle hyperactivity. The reason for this study is this until recently there has been no protocol with acupuncture points validated by specialists to reduce wrinkles in the frontal, glabella and ocular regions. Objective: To construct and validate of an acupuncture protocol for reducing facial wrinkles. Methodology: methodological study to identify the used acupuncture protocols from the integrative review of previous literature. The acupuncture points of protocol were evaluated by five expert acupuncturists for glabella, forehead and eyes winkles. The results were analyzed using the content validity index. Results: The accomplishment was based on the analysis of the answers of the specialists by the calculated of percentage of agreement in two rounds for three items: acupuncture points, number of sessions and time in minutes every session. Among the three items assessed by experts in the first round there was concordance of 90% for acupuncture points and 100% for a 20 minutes session. The items with disagreement were related to the session number and was made a new round for this item. The agreement was 80% for eight sessions. Conclusion: the construction of an acupuncture protocol with the participation and suggestions of experts group contributing to improving reliability of the treatment because it allows its reproducibility. In this research it was possible to obtain a concordance of more than 60% between the judges' committee on three important items for verification of results with acupuncture (acupuncture points, duration in minutes of each session and number of sessions), being considered satisfactory for the conclusion of the protocol.