Background An acupuncture is one of the popular modes of rehabilitation therapy for the stroke patients in Korean traditional medicine. Systematic reviews have been done for this topic, but could not include Korean studies due to language barrier. We tried to examine Korean studies on the effect of acupuncture on post-stroke rehabilitation and to evaluate their level of evidence.
Methods Korean articles were searched from databases of the Korean Institute of Oriental Medicine, the National Library of Korea, and Kyung Hee University Central Library with the keywords of stroke, joongpoong, cerebrovascular disease, acupuncture, electroacupuncture, and rehabilitation Selected articles were screened by applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. After these processes, we evaluated these articles with the level of evidence criteria from Oxford Center for Evidence-Based Medicine.
Results Initially. we found 53 Korean articles. Among them 46 were excluded from further analysis because 16 were not original articles and. 30 papers did not deal with the topic of this study. Three studies with, case series design(level of evidence. 4), one studies with quasi experimental design, and´onne randomized clinical ´trial design(ievel of evidence 2b) reported´ the positive effect of acupuncture on rehabilitation of the patient after the stroke. But, two quasi experimental studies(level of´evidence 2b) showed no effect of acupuncture on post-stroke rehabilitation.
Condusions Many stroke patients have been treated for rehabilitation with acupuncture by oriental medical doctors in Korea. Laymery oriental medical doctors, and even some western medical doctors in Korea believed that acupuncture is very effective therapy for rehabilitating stroke patients. We could not find study results with high level- of evidence for supporting this belief More randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews are needed in order to determine whether an acupuncture is beneficial to minimize the permanent disability after the stroke.
(Korean J-Health Promot Dis Prey 2004;4:5260)
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