Acupuncture treatment improves spinal cord injury complications

Spinal cord injury, resulting from trauma or neurodegeneration, is a devastating and life-altering injury. It often affects young and healthy individuals who are suffering from severe sensory and motor dysfunction. This debilitating condition not only creates enormous physical and emotional costs to individuals but also a significant financial burden to society.

While care and treatment options such as spinal surgery, pharmacological interventions and rehabilitation continue to improve, many patients with spinal cord injury still experience substantial disabilities and complications including bladder and bowel dysfunctions. These severely impact the quality of life of patients.

A recent study showed that acupuncture treatment can improve bladder and bowel functions in patients with spinal cord injury. After acupuncture treatment once a day five times a week for the first four week, then once every other day three times a week for a further four weeks, patients were then followed up for six months. Following acupuncture treatment, 29% of patients resumed normal bowel and bladder functions, 40% of patients showed significant improvement in both bladder and bowel functions. These effects persisted during the follow-up. The rest of patients did show little improvement.

The study concluded that acupuncture can provide an alternative modality in improving the complications in patients with spinal cord injury with little side effect.

Reference:

Liu Z et al., Electroacupuncture improves bladder and bowel function in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury: results from a prospective observational study. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2013; 2013:543174. doi: 10.1155/2013/543174.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24382977