New progress in clinical application of magnetic stimulation acupoint intervention

In the treatment system of traditional Chinese medicine meridian theory, acupuncture, moxibustion and other methods for acupoints have been widely known and applied. Magnetic stimulation is a new type of stimulation therapy, which owns various advantages, including painlessness, non-invasiveness, simple operation, easy repeatability and deep stimulation. It is mostly used and played a great role in the brain functional area or in stimulating peripheral nerves and muscles, considered as one of the four brain technologies. In recent years, magnetic stimulation technology has also been gradually applied and received certain achievement in acupoint intervention. To this end, we have done a literature review on domestic and foreign literatures during the past ten years. In the clinical treatment of sleep disorders, cerebral fatigue, depression, post-stroke hemiplegia, lumbar spinal surgery failure syndrome, muscle fatigue and some other diseases, magnetic stimulation acupoints have a certain role and can partially replace or even replace the conventional treatment. However, most of the current studies display a small sample size. Multi-center prospective randomized controlled studies and medical evidence are also insufficient. In this way, clinical studies with higher quality are greatly needed in the future. In terms of mechanism, most researches mainly focus on the changes of cerebral cortex of magnetic stimulation intervention in different acupoints, different parameters, and different states. At present, most of the main methods focus on EEG evoked potentials and brain networks, and then explores how to optimize the magnetic stimulation system to achieve better results. In addition to researchers from traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, researchers from engineering promote the multidisciplinary interdisciplinary in this area. This review shows that the combination of modern magnetic stimulation technology and traditional acupuncture theory is a new development of magnetic stimulation technology in the medical field, which has promoted the clinical application of traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture and is also beneficial to the promotion of acupoints in general medical treatment.