Clinical Observation Of Acupuncture At Thirteen Ghost Points In Treating Post-stroke Depression

ObjectiveThe curative effect of acupuncture at thirteen ghost points in treating post-stroke depression was observed by comparing two different methods of acupuncture. We tend to explore the mechanism of this special treatment from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective. Ultimately, from what we research, the clinical use of acupuncture in the treatment of post-stroke depression will be enriched as well.Method60 eligible cases suffering from post-stroke depression were enrolled in this research, and all the cases involved were randomly divided into two groups on average. Acupuncture at thirteen ghost points was applied on the treatment group while and commonly acupuncture was adopted in the control group. Before the study, foundation treatments of the two group were indispensable. After that, the treatment we investigated was conducted on a daily basis,5 days in a row. One course of therapy consist of 10 times of treatments. In this study, two courses of treatments must be completed within 4 weeks. The curative effect was evaluated by the Hamilton Depression scale 24 (HAMD) activities of daily living scale score (Barthel Index) before as well as after the therapy. SPSS 20.0 statistical software was used for dealing with all the data from the study.Results1.The baseline characteristics of the treatment group and the control group was comparative as a consequence of the no statistically significant difference between the two groups before the treatments.2. By intra-group comparison, the total scores of HAMD, MESSS, BI before and after treatment in the treatment group and the control group were statistically comparable and significant (P (0.05). In the two groups, the total scores of the former two scales decreased significantly (P<0.05), which had statistical difference while the scores of BI was higher than that before the treatment.3. By inter-group comparison, the total scores of HAMD, MESSS, BI before and after treatment in the treatment group and the control group were statistically comparable and significant (P<0.05).The total scores of the HAMD and MESSS in the treatment group decreased more significantly (P<0.05) than those in the control group. The total scores of the BI in the treatment group was higher than that in the control group.4. After two courses of the treatments, in the treatment group the number of recovered cases was 4, the number of significantly improved cases was 15 the number of worked cases was 7, the number of invalid cases was 4. Therefore, the effective clinical rate of this group was 86.67%, which was statistically higher than that of the control group, whose effective clinical rate was merely 70.00%.ConclusionFrom the data shown in the study, we can known that the therapies applied in both groups showed certain effect in treating post-stroke depression in terms of relieving depression, improving neurologic deficits,ameliorating the ability of daily life. However, the results illustrated that the effect of control group was not as well as that of the treatment group. Therefore, we can conclude that acupuncture at thirteen ghost points is an effective therapy which is worthy of being spread in treating post-stroke depression in clinical practice.