Acupuncture Treatment For Stroke Recovery Associated With Depression And Physical Disabilities

Objective:Observe the curative effect of acupuncture treatment on post-stroke depression (PSD) with paralysis.According to the basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and the syndrome of PSD, we believe that acupuncture treatment can reduce depression and improve standard of living and motor function for patients, compared against ordinary stroke inpatient treatment. My tutor has researched a large number of articles from inside and ouside the nation about acupuncture treatment on PSD patients. She found that although there were dozens of various ways for acupuncture treatment to be helpful, they were accomplished by different hand skills and according to different TCM syndromes. This entails problems of large scale replication. Meanwhile, research from outside of China suggests that acupuncture might be helpful for paralysis.Method:This research covers 140 PSD inpatients, all of whom suffered from stroke within three the past months. Research generally points to a peak in the number of PSD cases during the period of three to six months after stroke. Enrolled PSD inpatients suffering from paralysis received acupuncture treatment, on the basis of ordinary stroke treatment. Twenty-six PSD inpatients with paralysis, as a control group, in a hospital of the same rank as that of the research facility, received ordinary stroke treatment. The two groups of people were in similar condition prior to treatment, in terms of their age, gender, type of stroke, area suffering from paralysis, and TCM syndrome, (P>0.05). We use Zung Self-Rated Anxiety Scale (SAS), Motor Assessment Scale (MAS), Barthel Index (BI), Stroke Specific Quality of Life Scale (SS-QOL) and NIHSS, to assess the score before treatment, and again after one month and after the third month, to observe the change of their state of depression and motor function.Findings:The Acupuncture group showed a greater degree of improvement, from comparison of the change in their scores over the period of this experiment (P<0.01). The control group showed no siginificant difference in BI and SS-QOL (P>0.05). But MAS (P<0.01) and (P<0.05) for the control group indicates that ordinary stroke treatment can improve motor function and nerve defection, leading to increased standard of living. The curative effect between the acupuncture group and the control group showed a significant difference (P<0.05), demonstrating that ordinary treatment with acupuncture is better than treatment without acupuncture.Conclusions:Acupucture treatment is effective in reducing depression and improve their motor function.