Presentation summary

Co-Authors :
Kwang-Ho Bae, MD (KMD), PhD – KM Data Division, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
Young Seop Lee, MD (KMD), PhD – KM Data Division, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Introduction :
Obesity is a global health crisis, impacting quality of life and mortality. While lifestyle interventions are crucial, they’re insufficient to curb this trend. Electroacupuncture (EA) shows promise as asafe and effective intervention. Despite encouraging study results, comprehensive understanding of EA’s real-world effectiveness in large populations is limited. We aim to broadly evaluate EA’s effectiveness, offering insights into its real-world applicability and long-term outcomes.

Method :
This retrospective cohort study uses National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) claims and healthcheck-up data (2002-2023). Our population includes individuals aged 20-60, diagnosed with E66 obesity (2010-2022), with BMI ≥ 25 kg/m². The experimental group comprises those receiving EA, with ≥ 8 sessions within a two-year health check-up interval. A control group will be established via 1:3 propensity score matching, based on age, sex, and BMI. The primary outcome is body weight change over a two-year observation. Secondary outcomes include changes in waist circumference, BMI, blood pressure, and blood glucose. Confounding variables (age, sex, insurance qualification, baseline comorbidities) will be adjusted.
Body weight change will be analyzed via Linear Mixed Model or ANCOVA.

Discussion :
Korea’s single healthcare system and vast NHIS data, covering 50 million citizens, comprehensively provide demographics, medical records, claims, and health check-up results. This large-scalereal-world data significantly enhances the generalizability of research findings. Preliminary analysis of samplecohort data identified over 2,200 obesity treatments, with 542 involving EA, suggesting a sufficient analytical sample size for customized data analysis. While this study has limitations (e.g., inability to as certain specific acupoints, stimulation details, or non-covered services), it greatly compensates for previous studies’ smallsample sizes and limited follow-up periods.