Introduction: Brace yourselves for a shocker: managing pain after surgery is tough, even with all the modern bells and whistles of enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocols. But fear not, for the intrepid researchers have turned to the ancient art of poking and prodding specific body points—yes, acupoint stimulation—to see if it can work miracles on postoperative pain.

Methods: In a Herculean effort, they scoured ten databases for the crème de la crème of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), in both the Queen’s English and Mandarin Chinese, from the dawn of time (well, 1997) to the futuristic year of 2022. They then donned their critical thinking caps, wielding the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias Criteria and the modified Jadad Scale like Excalibur to judge the quality of each article. The holy grail? Pain control, as measured by the visual analog scale a whole 24 hours after surgery.

Results: Lo and behold, out of the abyss, eleven trials emerged worthy of inclusion. Acupoint stimulation strutted its stuff, outperforming control treatments in the pain intensity dance-off (standardized mean difference [SMD] -0.94; gasp!), reducing the gluttonous consumption of analgesic drugs (SMD -1.87; oh my!), and even tackling the dreaded postoperative nausea (PON), vomiting (POV), and the dynamic duo of PONV (SMDs that’ll make your head spin). The Zusanli (ST36) and Neiguan (PC6) acupoints were the prom kings, featured in 8 out of 11 trials. Side effects? Pfft, a mere bruise.

Discussion: In a stunning turn of events, poking people in specific spots after they’ve been sliced and diced in surgery seems to actually help more than just waving a magic wand and hoping for the best. The researchers, in their infinite wisdom, suggest that maybe—just maybe—we should consider adding this ancient needle play into our fancy ERAS shindigs. But hold your horses, they say; we need more RCTs, with even more rigour, to really seal the deal. Who would’ve thought?