The Preliminary Research On Treating Ischemic Stroke With Acupuncture

Objective:To test whether acupuncture can improve function of daily motion and cognition of the patients with acute ischemic stroke and reduce dependency and recurrence of stroke.Methods:88 patients of 352 in-patients with acute ischemic stroke in department of neurology of the first affiliated hospital of KunMing medical college were included and randomly allocated to a treatment group in which 43 patients were treated with acupuncture and a control group in which 45 patients were treated with a normal treatment. Acupuncture was conducted 3-10 days after stroke onset based on normal trentment,which was applied 5 times a week for 3 weeks.The outcome variables included Scandinavian Stroke Scale scores applied to assess neurological function deficits,and Neurobehavioral Cognitive Status Examination carried out to test cognitive disorder,and also death or dependency at the 6th month,and recurrence of stroke and Modified Rankin Scale and Barthel Index scores at the 6th month,and also the adverse events of acupuncture.All outcomes were assessed blindly.Results: At baseline,patients in each group were closely similar in all important prognostic variables. At 3 week no statistically significant differences were observed between the 2 groups for 3Soutcome,but had statistically significant differences for NCSE. At 6th month,follow up rate was 97.73%. no statistically significant differences were observed between the 2 groups for death or dependency and recurrence of stroke . But there were clinically important or statistically significant differences for the outcome of MRS and BI in the treatment group with acupuncture as compared with the control one,and the former is prior to the latter.No major adverse events were found in the group with acupuncture. Conclusions :Acupuncture had beneficial effect on improving quality of daily living and cognitive disorder of the patients with acute ischemic stroke,acupuncture is an applicable means in treating acute ischemic stroke.But because of limited sample size,we didn't draw a firm conclusion on effectiveness of treating acute ischemic stroke with acupuncture, we should expand the sample size to make progressive study to investigate whether acupuncture have important value to long-term end events.