Early treatment of acute ischemic stroke by integrated traditional and Western medicine

Objective: To observe the clinical efficacy of integrated traditional and Western medicine in the treatment of early stage acute ischemic stroke (AIS). Methods: Seventy-six patients with acute cerebral infarction were selected and randomly divided into the experimental group and the control group. The motor function and activity of daily life of the patients in both groups were evaluated by Fug + Meyer Assessment (FMA) and Modified Barthel Index (MBI) before and after the treatment. In addition, neurologic impairment in both groups was also evaluated. The patients in the control group were treated by a basic drug therapy in conjunction with exercises using basic rehabilitation methods. In addition to the treatment applied in the control group, the patients in the experimental group were also treated with traditional medicine rehabilitation. All patients have completed four weeks of basic rehabilitation training as well as rehabilitation training based on a Chinese medicine therapy. Results: After 4 weeks of rehabilitation, FMA and MBI scores as well as neurologic impairment of the patients with acute ischemic stroke were evaluated. The results showed that the experimental group had better outcomes than the control group in all evaluations (P<0.05), and the difference was statistically significant. The total effective rates in the experimental group and control group were 89.5% and 78.9%, respectively. The clinical efficacy in the experimental group was significantly better than that in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). Conclusion: The rehabilitation therapy based on integrated Chinese and Western medicine proved to be effective. It can promote the recovery of motor functions and the activity of daily living in patients of AIS. In addition, it can improve neurologic impairment and lead to good clinical outcomes, therefore is worthwhile to be promoted in clinical applications.