Abstract:[Objective] To investigate the effect of perioperative transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) on early postop- erative sleep quality and incidence of delirium in elderly patients who received spinal surgery under general anesthesia. [Methods] A total of 70 elderly patients who were undergoing spinal surgery were randomly divided into two groups, with 35 cases in each group. The TEAS group received percutaneous electrical stimulation at Baihui, Anmian, Shenmen and Sanyinjiao 1 day before surgery, before anesthesia and 1 day after surgery, while the control group received electrical stimulation in the corresponding non-acupoint part. The sleep was continu- ously monitored for 3 nights after operation, additionally, satisfaction to postoperative sleep and occurrence of delirium within 7 days after operation was evaluated. [Results] Of them, only 66 patients were got complete data, including 32 patients in the TEAS group and 34 pa- tients in the control group. There were no significant differences in terms of age, height, BMI, operation time, anesthesia time and preopera- tive PSQI between the two groups (P>0.05) . Regarding postoperative sleep quality monitoring, the TEAS group proved significantly superi- or to the control group in terms of sleep initiation time, total sleep time, sleep efficiency, steady sleep duration, steady sleep proportion and proportion of rapid eye movement sleep on the 1st to 3rd night after surgery (P<0.05) . In addition, TEAS group was also significantly better than the control group in term of the overall sleep satisfaction postoperatively (P<0.05) . Postoperative delirium mainly occurred within 3 days after surgery, which in total incidence of TEAS group (6.25%) was lower than that of control group (14.70%) , but the difference was not statistically significant (P>0.05) . [Conclusion] Perioperative percutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation at Baihui, Anmian, Shenmen and Sanyinjiao acupoints do improve postoperative sleep quality and reduce the incidence of postoperative delirium in elderly patients in perioperative period of spinal surgery under general anesthesia.