In order to help the therapist quickly find relevant information, the IAA database can be searched through in the Operation Window, to create effective healing treatment protocol. The Search Text Box is located under the Description Text Box, where you can type in keywords.
Enter Keywords in the Search text Box and click the Search Button
Besides manually choosing acupoints based on your knowledge and experience in acupuncture, the search function provides another fast way to help you find out as many appropriate points as possible within a second, so you can quickly create the treatment protocol.
Search Database by Symptoms, Diseases, Acupoints and Locations
Database search includes Acupoint Name (alpha-numeric, pinyin, English name) Search, Location Search, Healing Effect Search, Disease/Symptoms Search or searching with any combinations of these fields. By giving one or more keywords, you can quickly find out the related acupoints and add them to the Selected Acupoints List.
Point Pinyin Name..............e.g., Baihui, Shen Dao
Alpha-numeric Name............. e.g., GV20, GV11
Point Location........... e.g., 'above the posterior hairline', ear, foot, hand, leg, etc.
Disease Name........... e.g., insomnia, depression, epilepsy
Symptoms .................e.g., headache, back pain
Healing Effects.........e.g., tonifies kidney yang, warms gate of vitality, strengthens the back, benefits essence
The search options from any of these fields or combinations of them can be chosen in a popup menu when clicking on the button located in the area nearby the end of Search Text Box.
Manually type in keywords to search
To search the database, simply type in one or several keywords seperated with comma between them, and click on the Search Icon (the magnifier image at the bottom part of the window). For example, if you type in the following keywords in the Search Text Box (remember to put a ", " between keywords) like this,
pain in the shoulder, pain in the shoulder joint
The descriptions of the found acupoints are displayed
As soon as you press Search Icon Button, all related acupoints that may treat these symptoms will be added to the Selected List and at the same time the descriptions about these acupoints are all displayed in the Description Panel (as shown in the picture above). The related acupoints' image is also shown in the Acu-Chart image panel (see the image below that shows one of the points, LI15: Jian Yu).
Search with keywords in the field of Indication; All related points added, shown in the chart.
If you want to start a new search, you can delete all previously selected points in the list by right-clicking within the Selected Acupoint List, and then choosing 'Delete All' in the popup menu.
After the search is done, you now can go through the search results and select the necessary points and remove the unnecessary points. To do so, simply click it once to select ('+' sign) and click again to unselect ('-' sign). The first click will activate the item as it shows in red, and clicking again will unselect/select it. You may use other convenient functions listed in the popup menu by right clicking the Selected Acupoints List panel.
Importing Keywords from Diseases/Symptoms List to search
Other than manually typing in keywords, you can also choose words from Symptoms or Diseases List to perform a search. To do so, click on the button "Symptoms" on the top of the Meridian List (the left-most list), you will then see that the list automatically changes to the List of Symptoms and Diseases.
In the Symptoms / Diseases List, select any item in the list, and the item will be automatically added to the Search Text Box. You can select multiple items from the list and search at once. The selected items will be separated by a comma followed by a space (", "). Of course, you still can add keywords by typing in them in the Search Text Box. Always remember to put a ", " between keywords, and confirm that all keywords interest you, and then press the Search Icon to perform a search.
The entire search process is as simple as a few clicks. The most important thing to do is to compose the keywords in the search text box. As soon as you are done and click the search button, then your treatment points are listed and almost ready to go. All you have to do now is to click each point in the Selected Acupoint List, see the image, read the description, and choose to select or unselect the point. This is the major part of your treatment protocol creation as described in next section.
Note that there are another ways to add points to the Selected Acupoints List, such as using the Click to Add option in the popup menu when right clicking the chart. While this is on, whenever you click a 3D-color ball indicated acupoint, the point will be added to the Selected Acupoints List. This action involves two tasks: 1) checking the selected acupoints list to see whether this point is in the list, and 2) adding the point to the list if it is not in the list already.
