ACUPUNCTURE CAN HELP PREVENT STROKES AFTER INJURY

According to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Conference in 2014, a person under 50 increases the chance of suffering a stroke by three times after an injury to the head or neck. The findings are important because it now appears strokes after trauma can be prevented with proper treatment.

Researchers studied the health records of over a million patients younger than 50 years who had been treated in emergency trauma rooms. About 11 of every 100,000 patients had suffered a stroke within four weeks. It was also noted that about 48 in 100,000 young adults and 11 of 100,000 children who had a head or neck injury had a stroke.

A major cause of stroke after trauma is a tear in the head or neck blood vessels that lead to the brain that cause a stroke. If these artery damages can be determined at the time of the trauma, a patient could be treated to help prevent stroke. Over 10 percent of the people who had a stroke were diagnosed with this kind of tear, but not all the patients were diagnosed with it prior to stroke.

The rate of stroke among trauma patients found in this study was determined using a fairly broad definition of trauma. The next step in the study will be to measure stroke incidence after different types of trauma, such as car collisions, and injuries such as vertebral fractures in order to determine who might be at higher risk.

Scientific studies have indicated that acupuncture can facilitate nerve regeneration, prevent the aggregation of blood cells, dilate blood vessels by triggering the release of hormones and help surviving nerve cells find new pathways, by-passing damaged parts of the brain.

Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database recently conducted a retrospective study of patients receiving acupuncture treatment and patients without acupuncture treatment after head and neck trauma. The patients with acupuncture treatment had a lower incidence of stroke compared with those without acupuncture treatment after an adjustment for coexisting medical conditions and medications. The probability curve showed that patients receiving acupuncture treatment had a lower probability of stroke than those without acupuncture treatment during the follow-up period.