Acupuncture for Endometriosis: A Content Analysis of Biomedical Discourse

Reliance on gynaecology services for endometriosis care is ineffective and inefficient (Joseph and Mills 2019). There is an urgent need to locate alternatives to reduce suffering for those with this chronic, painful disease, which affects at least 11% of women and people assigned female at birth globally (Ellis et al. 2022; Agarwal et al. 2019). Recognizing the significant challenges arising from a single-provider, biomedical-focused model (Joseph and Mills 2019), clinical guidelines for endometriosis treatment in Europe and Canada recently endorse moving towards long-term, patient-focused, and multi-disciplinary chronic care models (Becker et al. 2022; CMAJ 2023). However, these guidelines do not extend beyond encouraging primary care providers to discuss treatment modalities with patients (Becker et al. 2022; CMAJ 2023). While research shows various complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) are increasingly identified as useful in the treatment of chronic pain conditions, including endometriosis (Armour et al. 2019; Fisher et al. 2016; Su et al. 2014), knowledge about this use, and understandings of the therapeutic role(s) CAM have in endometriosis symptom management, are limited. This paper asks, what is the therapeutic role(s) of acupuncture in endometriosis treatment that is articulated by biomedical discourse? I examine peer-reviewed journal articles sampled from a purposive search of scholarly databases for titles containing the keywords ‘acupuncture’ and ‘endometriosis’. Employing an inductive content analysis, I explore how acupuncture is understood as a treatment for endometriosis within the milieu of medical discourse. I critically consider the content of the articles as well as the journals they are published in, and how these represent symbolic socio-cultural domains of knowledge. This sociological analysis of the therapeutic role of acupuncture in endometriosis treatment as articulated by biomedicine reveals tacit assumptions within this discourse, and points to ways power flows through the knowledge that structures endometriosis care within biomedicalized societies such as Canada.