Feature: Traditional Chinese medicine enables Armenian doctor to do better

Traditional Chinese medicine has enabled Armenian proctologist Sona Yeritsyan to do better in her treatment of patients in the Armenian capital.

For example, with acupuncture, massage and physical therapy techniques, she has discovered more effective options for relieving her patients' pain.

Yeritsyan also believes she could use these methods to help patients quit smoking or alcoholism.

"Traditional Chinese medicine is very fascinating," the Armenian medical practitioner told Xinhua, and that she is ready to tap its potential in her medical practice.

Yeritsyan studied traditional Chinese medicine techniques last year. She attended a two-month training course sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce at the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

However, it was a Chinese woman on whom she first tried what she had learned in Beijing after finishing the training course. She not only succeeded, in fact, she saved the woman's life.

This was in mid-December when Yeritsyan and two of her Armenian "classmates" returned home from Beijing. The Chinese woman aboard the same flight to Moscow suddenly fell ill, losing pulse.

Rushing to administer first aid, the three Armenian doctors managed to bring her back to consciousness using the acupressure technique of traditional Chinese medicine they had just learned, thus saving her life.

No doubt, this success greatly increased Yeritsyan's confidence in traditional Chinese medicine, which she knew little about before studying it in China's capital.

She said Western medicine can help the patient as much as it is medically possible, and a lack of medications often makes options limited in Armenia.

"Due to the lack of certain medications, certain treatments might not be possible in Armenia," she said. This is where she believes traditional Chinese medicine can come to her aid.

There are currently quite a few doctors at Armenian hospitals using acupuncture and other traditional Chinese medicine techniques. Yet Yeritsyan thinks traditional Chinese medicine should be more widely applied in the Central Asian state.

She also suggests Armenian doctors travel to China to learn more about traditional Chinese medicine. Endi