What are the advantages and disadvantages of veterinary acupuncture?
Veterinary acupuncture is a natural form of treatment that enlists your pet’s inflammatory and healing mechanisms to maintain homeostasis and manage disease processes. Unlike with some pharmaceutical treatments, there is no masking of a serious problem. Acupuncture techniques can be used for diagnosis as well as treatment. The main disadvantage of veterinary acupuncture is the owner’s misunderstanding of what to expect from its use: the belief that the pet will miraculously improve, that all conditions can be treated with veterinary acupuncture, and that the animal will only need one treatment when several treatments are usually necessary to achieve (and sometimes maintain) the desired result. Other potential disadvantages include the chance that the pet will overuse an injured limb (because of decreased pain as a result of the veterinary acupuncture) resulting in a more serious injury and misapplication of acupuncture needles can result in eye injuries, pneumothorax, infectious arthri
