We appreciate the thoughtful feedback on our study.1 Here we address key points concisely. The “time to first flatus” is a standard and clinically meaningful endpoint for assessing gastrointestinal function recovery and guiding clinical decision making and is widely used in the evaluation of postoperative ileus (POI). Although subjective, it represents a key patient-reported turning point in recovery.2,3 The analysis of bowel sounds was an exploratory component, conducted in only 30 patients. The absence of significant differences should not be interpreted as evidence against the efficacy of electroacupuncture (EA).
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