Clinical Evaluation of Acupuncture on the Complications of Cerebral Vascular Accident

Overview

The lifestyle of Taiwanese people has been changed over the past decade with the improvement of economic growth, environmental sanitation and the quality of medical care. Now the investigators pay more attention to the increasing risk of people's diseases of civilization than people's malnutrition and poor quality of environmental sanitation. The cerebrovascular accident (CVA) leads to death and bio-psycho-social dysfunction. The medical care of the patient of cerebrovascular accident cause a lot of money and is a burden of our country. Our study emphasizes that acupuncture change bio-psycho-social aspects of the patient with cerebrovascular accident. The investigators use some scales to assess efficacy of acupuncture, such as Barthel index, National Institute of Health Stroke Scale, Visual Analogue Scale, Instrumental Activities of Daily Living and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Besides, the investigators notice that there are few journals about acupuncture effect of treating depression following cerebral vascular accident. The investigators may underestimate the amount of people having post-stroke depression. So the investigators use Hamilton Depression Rating Scale to Assess the post-stroke depression of cerebral vascular accident patient. By assessing bio-psycho-social level of CVA patient, the investigators hope this study will offer them more "Holistic Health Care".

We want to assess the effect of acupuncture on stroke patients. The study is a double-blind randomized controlled trial. We need 80 patients altogether. The Inclusion Criteria: (1)first time stroke(ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke) with paresis or plegia Exclusion Criteria: (1)transient ischemic attack (2)brain tumor, brain trauma (3)recurrent stroke (4)multiple organs failure, cancer The whole course of the acupuncture contains 24times(about 3 months). The acupoints are fixed and located over head and limbs. The whole course of the sham acupuncture contains 24times(about 3 months). The acupoints are fixed and 1cm away from meridian and no acupoints over head were chosen. The investigators use Barthel index, National Institute of Health Stroke Scale, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Instrumental activities of daily living scale and Visual Analogue Scale to assess the effect of acupuncture on stroke patients. Four times of assessment are as below: baseline, after 8th treatment, after 16th treatment, after 24th treatment (the last time of treatment). The course of treatment should be completed within 3 months.