The Search for International Consensus on Auricular Acupuncture Nomenclature

The World Health Organization (WHO) has held multiple international meetings to establish a standardized nomenclature for body acupuncture, but a global consensus for auricular acupuncture nomenclature has not yet been fully accepted. An international symposium on auriculotherapy that will meet in Singapore in 2017 will strive to finalize a standardized auricular nomenclature. A series of meetings sponsored by the WHO led to a standard nomenclature for body acupuncture points. This system consisted of an alphanumeric code, the Pinyin Chinese phonetic name, and the Han character for each acupuncture point, and the English translation of the Chinese names for acupuncture meridians. A two-letter rather than a one-letter abbreviation was adopted for each meridian. A 1990 international meeting held in Lyon, France, also sponsored by the WHO, was not able to arrive at a collective consensus regarding differences in the ear acupuncture maps used by acupuncturists from Asia in contrast to the somatotopic system developed by European doctors. The importance of facilitating an international nomenclature standard for the purposes of research, teaching, and clinical findings for the field of auriculotherapy remains a high priority.