Acupuncture Treatment Of Bell's Palsy Clinical Multi-center Randomized Controlled Study

Objective Bell' s palsy is an acute facial paralysis due to inflammation of the facial nerve. A lot of studies published in China have suggested acupuncture and moxibustion(acup-moxi)is beneficial for facial palsy. In order to verify the efficacy of acup-moxi for Bell' s palsy, a multicenter, single-blind, randomized controlled trial was done. Methods There were four clinical centers with 480 patients involved in this trial, 439 completed and 41 missing or declining. All patients were randomized into a control group or two treatment groups; meanwhile, stratified randomization was made in terms of situation and course of disease. Control group was treated with Prednision, VitB1, VitB12 and Dibazole and treatment groups with acup-moxi or/and Prednision, VitBi, VitB12 and Dibazole. Symptoms and signs, House-Brackmann scale, FDI score were applied to evaluate the effectiveness in four weeks. Some patients accepted MCV, ENOG and BR tests in pre-post treatment. Results Four clinical centers did well. The characteristics of three groups were comparable. Thus, there were no statistically significant differences between the control and treatment groups. There were no differences in efficacy among four clinical centers and, there were significant differences in the control and treatment groups. According to the evaluation of House-Brackmann scale and FDI score, the effectiveness of treatment groups was better than that of control group. Among of them, acup-moxi was the best. In subgroups analysis, there were no statistically significant differences between the control andtreatment groups in mild facial paralysis, however the effectiveness of acup-moxi treatment was better than that of control group in sever facial paralysis. Delayed-phenomenon was existed in both MCV and ENOG tests. MCV and BR tests were better than ENOG test in early diagnosis (first week onset of facial paralysis), but ENOG test was better than MCV and BR tests in late diagnosis. The recovery of temporal branch of facial nerve was better than that of buccal branch in MCV and ENOG tests. Conclusion Efficacy of acup-moxi for Bell' s palsy was verified explicitly. The authors recommend that all patients with Bell' s palsy receive acup-moxi treatment.