Clinical comparison of acupuncture treatments for hemiplegia / 全日本鍼灸学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

All three acupuncture treatment methods studied (scalp acupuncture method, orbit acupuncture method, and acupuncture method of activating brain and regaining consciousness) had the high rate of overall effectiveness of approximately 90%. However, a gap is seen among these complete cure rates from the acute stage to the after-effect stage, which is 5%-58%. It has been almost conclusively verified that recent acupuncture method of activating brain and regaining consciousness has a 65% rate of complete cure in cases of acute cerebral infarction and a 55% rate of complete cure in cases of acute cerebral hemorrhage. Moreover, the number of data is one figure higher, and thus considered to be reliable. Conditions affecting clinical effectiveness include the length of affliction, hemorrhage site, and the area affected. The disease stages are the acute phase, stable phase, recovery phase and after-effect phase. Since the effectiveness of treatment decreases with each phase, early treatment is imperative. In the early stage, i. e., within the first twenty days, symptoms such as hemiplegia, difficulty swallowing and speech impediment show remarkable improvement. However, when the condition progresses into the later phases and these symptoms have become fixed or worsened, the potential for effective treatment decreases. Nonetheless, the rate or complete cure using the acupuncture method of activating brain and regaining consciousness is 46% for cerebral infarction and 27% for cerebral hemorrhage in the after-effect stage. As for differences according to the site affected, clinical effectiveness is high in cases where hemorrhage occurs in a branch of the cerebral cortex, with some patients being able to stand up and walk unassisted after a single or several treatments; the complete cure rate in the acute phase is high. The clinical effectiveness in cases of hemorrhage in the internal capsule is not as high. In a fairly high proportion of the patients, no clinical effects are observed for a short period. Although remarkable improvement is noticed in a few patients, in general, the complete cure rate for the acute phase is low.