Frequency Of Acupuncture Interventions For Leukoaraiosis-type Mild Cognitive Dysfunction

1. BackgroundLeukoaraiosis is the extensive impairment of white matter, which is caused by ischemic cerebral small vascular disease. Cognitive impairment is closely related with leukoaraiosis,it occurs when white matter damage reaches a certain level,. With the development of neuroimaging, there is an increase in the detection rate of leukoaraiosis.MRI T2and T2-Flair can detect leukoaraiosis well in the early stages of this disease. Hence it can be used as an effective observation indicator for leukoaraiosis mild cognitive impairment (LAMCI), which in turn can be used as a good entry point for vascular mild cognitive impairment (VMCI) research.Due to an increase in social and economic pressure, more stress and negative emotions are accumulated in people, resulting in the trend of higher clinical morbidity of leukoaraiosis in younger generations. As VMCI causes cognitive and executive ability impairment, which decreases patients'quality of life, early detection and preventive treatment of VMCI has become increasingly important.It has been proven in previous literatures that acupunture sessions of longer duration and higher frequency is effective in the curing of VCI. However, the nature of this treatment requires patients to spend a large amount of time in the clinic and as most patients are middle aged working adults, many are unable to adhere to their treatment schedules and this has become an obstable for the treatment to take effect fully. Acupunture for VCI also incurs hefty medical bills on patients. Therefore, it has become critical to ensure patients' compliance to treatment sessions without affecting the efficacy of the treatment.2. ObjectiveTo obseve the effectiveness of acupunture on LAMCI patients using varying frequency of acupunture sessions per week and thus determine the suitable acupunture frequency for VMCI.3. MethodDongfang Hospital acupunture outpatients who meet the criteria of this study are taken in as test subjects. The same acupunture points, methods, stimulation strength, needle-retaining time and period of treatment are applied to two different groups of patients-one with treatment thrice a week, the other twice a week. The effectiveness of acupunture treatment is then evaluated by neuropsychological testing.4. ResultsThe effectiveness for the group with treatment thrice a week for a period of5weeks and10weeks are21.4%(7.1%excellent) and64.3%(28.6%excellent) respectively; while the effectiveness for the group with treatment twice a week for a period of5weeks and10weeks are12.5%(6.25%excellent) and50.0%(18.75%excellent) respectively. MoCA scores are compared with the original scores. After10weeks of treatment, improvement in patients'attentiveness. language ability, delayed recall ability and orientation ability can be observed.5. ConclusionAcupunture treatment for LAMCI lasting5weeks or more shows good short-term efficacy and the effectiveness increases with the course of the treatment. Acupunture can improve patients' attentiveness, language ability, delayed recall ability and orientation with the effectiveness being more significant for treatments that lasted6-10weeks. Significance:The suiitable acupunture frequency for LAMCI is that of twice a week for a period of10weeks.