Evaluating the Therapeutic Effect of Acupuncture on Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients

Acupuncture therapy in traditional Chinese medicine has been verified in many disease by thousands years. Due to the feasible and relatively safe in acupuncture management, now the west countries had been well document about acupuncture in medicine. The acupuncture therapy applied in post stroke functional recovery has been considered as more benefit than physical therapy only to post stroke rehabilitation. However, the effect of combined acupuncture therapy with standard management in acute stroke patient still remains unknown. The aim of this study is to evaluate the therapeutic effect of acupuncture in acute ischemic stroke patients. The prospective study was designed as a randomized, single blinded, control trial. We collected newly onset of acute ischemic stroke patient without underling systemic major illness, and randomized assign the collected patients into two groups as experimental (acupuncture)group and normal control group. The two groups both treat with routine western medicine as standard stroke therapy. The outcome measurement will evaluate by the changes from baseline at one and three months. The assessed scales including NIH stroke scale, the Barthel index, the Functional Independence Measure score, the Fugl-Meyer Assessment, and the Modified Rankin Scale. We compared the all variable measurements to see if any benefit from acupuncture group than the control group.