Clinical Study On Periarthritis Treatment With Warm Needle Combined With Chinese Herbs

Periarthritis, also known as frozen shoulder, which features with pain in the shoulder joints and dysfunction of the shoulder joints, is mainly caused by a variety of reasons leading to aseptic inflammation, tissue fiber degeneration, necrosis, and adhesion of the tendon, ligament, fascia around the shoulder joints and shoulder joint capsule. It usually happens to the persons at age of 50 or so with a slightly higher incidence rate in female, more commonly in manuals. In the early period of the disease, the pain in the shoulder joint happens paroxysmal, often induced by weather changes and toil. Late it will gradually develop into a persistent pain and get worse day by day resulting in waking up at night, not lying on the iposilateral side and both active and passive activities limitation in all directions of the shoulder joints. It will cause a severe pain if pull the shoulder. It may have a wide range of shoulder tenderness and spread to neck and elbows, but also shows different degrees of deltoid muscle atrophy. If lacks effective treatment, it may seriously affect the function of shoulder joint, hinder daily life and bring a heavier burden to the family and society. So far, treatments for frozen shoulder in Western medicine include drug therapy, surgery and rehabilitation, but both drug therapy and surgery are only to relieve symptoms and have significant risks and side effects. However, the Chinese Medicine with the syndrome differentiation as a major feature balance acute and chronic condition, search for the basic cause of a disease in its treatment. In particularly, acupuncture combining with Chinese herb can not only clear the meridians, but also regulate the organs, remedying both the principal and secondary aspects of the disease, and works rapidly and profoundly. Therefore to treat frozen shoulder with the method of regulating both the Qi and blood, dredging and activating the meridians, dispelling the wind and cold, wiping out the moisture and ecchymosis, as well as tonifying the liver and kidney, has shown a good effect in clinical practice.ObjectiveOn base of simple randomized control, to observe how can warm needle combined with the compound of Chinese Angelica Decoction for Restoring Yang improve the dysfunction and pain in shoulder joints caused by frozen shoulder, and provide a more reliable and effective clinical therapy. MethodSelect 60 patients meet the inclusion criteria from those who see doctors in clinic both in the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Foshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine for the study, and then divide them into treatment group and control group,30 cases in each group, using a simple method of randomization. The treatment group will get the treatment of warm needle combined with the modification of Chinese Angelica SiNi Decoction while the control group will get warm needle and general acupuncture. Finally comprehensively assess the outcomes by comparing the result of the ASES and VAS test both before and after the treatment.ResultThe general information of the two groups including gender distribution, age, course, treatment history, disease location, ASES scores and the VAS scores before treatment shows no significant statistical difference (P>0.05). After treatment, compared with the control group, the treatment group shows significant statistical difference in all aspects of ASES assessment (P<0.05), such as whether get pain at night or so. In VAS assessments after treatment, the treatment group also shows significant statistical difference in aspects of pain frequency, pain scale and improvement of the pain compared with the control group (P<0.05).ConclusionChinese medicine is a safe and effective non-surgical therapy for periarthritis. The therapy warm needle combined with Chinese herbs shows much better effect than that general acupuncture combined with warm needle. Both ASES and VAS are relatively sensitive in the efficacy evaluation of frozen shoulder, and the former is more sensitve.