Clinical Study On Treatment Of Post-stroke Spastic Paralysis By Fire Needle Therapy

ObjectiveBy observing the efficacy of fire needle therapy combined with acupuncture on post-stroke spastic hemiplegia, evaluate the curative effect objectively and provide the effective and trustworthy evidence for the optimization plan of fire needle combined with acupuncture therapy.Methods60 patients of post-stroke spastic hemiplegia accepting treatment in either Acupuncture out-patient or in-patient Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of TCM as well as meeting inclusion criteria were selected from June 2015 to January 2016. Patients were randomly assigned into treatment group and control group in the proportion of 1:1,30 cases in each group. On the basis of neurological routine treatment in both groups, the treatment group received fire needle therapy combined with acupuncture while the control group received only acupuncture, applying the same acupoints and operation. Based on the Jin’s 3-needle technique, temporal 3-needle on unaffected side and upper and lower limbs 3-neddle for spastic paralysis including Jiquan(HT1), Chize(LU5), Neiguan(PC6), Shuxi (the extra point)、Yinlingquan(SP9) and Sanyinjiao(SP6) were selected as the main acupoints, assisted by points selection according to syndromes. Fire needle therapy is to pricking tender points or nodal points on both sides of tendons near ankles on the affected side. The control group only received acupuncture therapy. Both therapies were applied once per day, five times a week for four consecutive weeks. Patients were evaluated before and after treatment above by modified Ashworth activity scale(MAS), the clinical spasticity index score(CSI), simplified limbs Fugl-Meyer Assessment(FMA) and activities of daily living(ADL) rating scale(Barthel Inedx). Evaluated data were analyzed by SPSS22.0 software to assess the curative effect.ResultsThere were no statistically significant discrepancies in the general information, including the gender, age, course of disease, among patients in both groups (P>0.05), revealing the comparability between the groups. Besides, no statistically significant differences were showed in the pre-treatment evaluation parameters of the patients (P>0.05), including the modified Ashworth activity scale(MAS), the clinical spasticity index score(CSI), simplified limbs Fugl-Meyer Assessment(FMA) and activities of daily living(ADL) rating scale(Barthel Inedx, BI), which displayed the two groups were comparable. After 4 weeks of treatment, apart from the CSI scores, there were statistically significant differences among MAS, FMA and BI, declaring the treatment group was superior to the control group on improving athletic ability, activities of daily living and the degree of upper limb spasticity (P<0.05).Conclusions1. Both the fire needle combined with acupuncture therapy and simple acupuncture were effective against post-stroke spastic paralysis.2. Both groups showed similar efficacy in lower-limb spasticity improvement, but fire needle combined with acupuncture therapy was superior to the simple acupuncture one on improving athletic ability, activities of daily living and the degree of upper limb spasticity in patients with post-stroke spastic paralysis(P<0.05).