Here is just one example of how Stanford University has MD's use
acupuncture in their hospitals.  The second to last paragraph shows
just how well accepted acupuncture is within mainstream medicine.  At
any rate, the idea of anesthesiologists using acupuncture makes
perfect sense.

"Acupuncture treatments were already available to outpatients at
Stanford through the Center for Integrative Medicine, and to patients
at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital through the Pediatric Pain and
Integrative Medicine clinic. Since the division’s official launch in
July, it has also put a physician on call five days a week for
acupuncture consultations for inpatients at both Packard and Stanford
hospitals. "

http://med.stanford.edu/patient_care/spotlight/archive/acupuncture.html

East meets West as hospitals offer inpatients the healing power of
acupuncture
By Shawna Williams

Anesthesiologist Emily Ratner, MD, administers acupuncture treatment
for back pain. Ratner and Brenda Golianu co-direct the new division of
medical acupuncture, which now provides both inpatient and outpatient
services at Stanford's two hospitals.

Afraid of needles? The work of two medical center anesthesiologists
could change your mind. They’ve seen firsthand that acupuncture can
ease pain and help patients relax – not exactly the reactions most
people associate with the sight of sharp, glinting steel.

Brenda Golianu, MD, assistant professor of anesthesia, and Emily
Ratner, MD, associate professor of anesthesia, are co-directors of the
Department of Anesthesia’s new division of medical acupuncture. One of
their primary goals is to give patients at Stanford’s two hospitals
access to the healing power of needles.

Acupuncture, which consists of putting needles into strategic spots on
a person’s skin, can complement Western procedures, Ratner said.
Studies have shown that acupuncture often relieves common post-
operative problems such as nausea, vomiting and pain, and may also
alleviate post-operative ileus, a condition in which the intestines
temporarily stop working after an operation. At Lucile Packard
Children’s Hospital, Golianu and others are studying whether
acupuncture can help children require fewer sedatives while
intubated.

Acupuncture, which the Chinese have practiced for thousands of years,
is designed to restore the balanced flow of energy, or chi, in the
body. It remained relatively unknown in the United States until 1972
when a New York Times reporter in China had to have his appendix
removed. Treated post-operatively with acupuncture, he was impressed
with the results and wrote a front-page article about the experience,
sparking widespread interest in the subject.

In 1997, the National Institutes of Health released a consensus
statement listing specific conditions that acupuncture had been proven
to treat effectively and stating that “further research is likely to
uncover additional areas where acupuncture interventions will be
useful.”

“That statement really opened the doors for the use of acupuncture
because it paved the way for a number of insurance companies to cover
acupuncture treatments,” Golianu said.

Although Western researchers now agree that acupuncture works for
certain conditions, they have yet to discover why. Imaging studies
reveal that needling certain points changes blood flow in the brain,
and others have shown acupuncture causes the release of endorphins,
the body’s natural painkillers. But, said Golianu, “there’s still a
black box in terms of the mechanism of action.”

“People say to me, ‘How can you do that because you don’t even know
how it works?’ And I say, well, nobody knows how general anesthetics
work either,” Ratner said. “But obviously we’d like to understand the
basis of how it works.”

Golianu first became interested in acupuncture while in college when
she spent her junior year studying in Taiwan and the People’s Republic
of China. Intrigued by her observations of the efficacy of
acupuncture, she returned several times during medical school to
Taiwan and studied at the China Medical College. She also spent six
months in a clinic in Japan. She completed an intensive acupuncture
certification program for physicians offered through UCLA and began to
practice it along with the techniques she’d learned in medical
school.

As for Ratner, she had an epiphany while on sabbatical. “I came to
this realization that there are a lot of patients that fall between
the cracks in Western medicine,” she said. On returning to Stanford
she called Golianu, who invited her to observe treatments at the
Center for Integrative Medicine. Ratner eventually completed the UCLA
course as well. “It became pretty clear to me that this was a whole
avenue where we could make a huge difference in the lives of
multitudes of patients,” she said.

An example, Golianu said, is a 20-year-old man she treated recently
who is dying of graft-versus-host disease, a complication of bone
marrow transplants in which the donated bone marrow attacks the
recipient’s organs and tissues. He was hospitalized because he was on
high doses of opiates to control back pain, but was also taking valium
and experiencing breathing difficulties. “Then one day I stuck in six
needles with some electrical stimulation and he was comfortable for
the first time in months,” she said.

Golianu and Ratner hope to bring similar relief to other patients.
“You can look at it as East meets West,” Ratner said. “We’re looking
to provide the best of both traditions to patients who are in the
hospital receiving complex medical care.”

“Acupuncture therapy has been used for centuries and has been largely
ignored by Western medicine,” said Ron Pearl, MD, PhD, professor and
chair of the Department of Anesthesia. “Our pain-management physicians
have used acupuncture for at least a decade, but what’s new is
creating a structured program to expand its use. One of the things we
can offer at Stanford is to learn more about when acupuncture works,
how it works and what we can do better.”

Acupuncture treatments were already available to outpatients at
Stanford through the Center for Integrative Medicine, and to patients
at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital through the Pediatric Pain and
Integrative Medicine clinic. Since the division’s official launch in
July, it has also put a physician on call five days a week for
acupuncture consultations for inpatients at both Packard and Stanford
hospitals.

Eventually, Ratner and Golianu would like to expand the division to
include more patient services, acupuncture education for medical
students, residents and doctors, and an expanded research component.