ABSTRACT
Objective The purpose of study was to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of theblood-letting and herbal-cupping therapy for lumbar spinal stenosis.Methods A multi-center prospective case series was performed.The LSS patients meeting the inclusion criteria received 8 treatments as a course and 4 courses in total.The primary outcomes were the symptom severity and physical function scale ofthe Swiss Spinal Stenosis Measurement (SSM,total score 0-5 for each domain).The secondary outcomes were thethe 12-item short form health survey (SF-12,total score 0-100),and Oswestry disability index (ODI,total score 0-100) at time of baseline,completion of last treatment of each course.The minimal clinically important differences (MCIDs) were calculated for estimating the percentage of improvement in the population.The adverse events were reported at any time of the intra-and post-operation.This was a phrase analysis of the studyat seven months.Results Forty-eight patientswere included,with 64.6％ (31/48) of LSS showing neurogenic claudication (walking distance ≤200 m).The average age was 63.1 ± 11.7 years,19 (39.6％) female,and the average BMI was 25.3 ± 3.3 kg/m2.The scores of symptom severity scale of SSM were 2.8 ± 0.6,2.6 ± 0.7,2.3 ± 0.6,1.9 ± 0.2 at baseline,1st,2nd,3rd course,and the scores of physical function scale were 2.5 ± 0.8,2.4 ± 0.7,2.1 ± 0.5,1.8 ± 0.3,and all the changes between baseline and each course showed significant improvement.The patient satisfaction of SSM,ODI and SF-12 showed significantimprovements after the 1st,2nd,3rd course (P＜0.05).The SF-12 subgroup physical composite scores after 3rd course and mental composite score after 1st showed no significant improvement.The minimal clinically important difference for the “SymptomSeverity scale” in the SSM was achieved withimprovement of 18.8％,40.6％,83.3％ in the LSS patient population after 1st,2nd,3rd course;and the "physical function scale" in SSM was achieved withimprovement of 22.9％,31.3％,50.0％.A total of 15 patients felt pain when they were micro-punctured with little blood at first time,but the symptom wereimmediately relieved without any treatment.Conelusions The Blood-letting and herbal-cupping therapy could benefit patients with lumbar spinal stenosis after third course of treatment in the fields of symptom relief and quality of life with no severe adverse event.However,this was a phrase analysis,so more evidence of this study and large comparative researches should be warranted in future.
ABSTRACT
In order to form the expert consensus which researched on the comprehensive individualized protocol of Tuina therapy for Knee osteoarthritis, the preliminary protocol was summarized and formed by analyzing the interviews and published paper. And then the expert consensus method was applied for the protocols of Tuina therapy for KOA. After discussions, the consensus of three protocols according to the classification of KOA main symptomes was researched. In the protocols, 75％～80％ of the entries were considered as strong recommendation, and the others were weak recommended. Thus, it is believed that the comprehensive protocols for the treatment of KOA with different Tuina manipulations is feasible and reproducible after standardization.