The micro-current stimulation of knee acupoints in management of chondromalacia patella: a case report.

[Purpose] A case report in which we treated injured patellar cartilage using non-invasive electrical stimulation; we also used MRI to document the morphology of the patellar cartilage before and after the treatment. [Participant and Methods] A police officer suffered from right anterior knee pain that noticeably affected his firearms marksmanship in kneeling position. After a MRI scan he was diagnosed with grade I chondromalacia patella involving the lateral patellar facet.

Effect of Laser Acupuncture on Heart Rate Variability of Nonpatients and Patients with Spinal Cord Injury.

Sensory loss in a complete spinal cord injury (SCI) can be described as an injury that removes the ability of the brain to receive electrical afferent signals generated below the site of the injury. The sensory nervous system appears to be the same as the meridians in the concept of Oriental medicine, thus, we assumed that a complete SCI would lead to discontinuation of the meridians in humans. In this case series report with a cross-sectional view, we observed quantitative changes in heart rate variability induced by laser acupuncture at bilateral GB34 and ST36 points for 15 minutes in eight patients with complete SCIs between the levels of T8 and T12, and eight healthy individuals as a control group.

Preliminary investigation: acupoint-skin conductance in stroke survivors.

It has been reported that patients with rheumatoid arthritis or asthma have skin conductance over the acupoints that is lower than that of their healthy counterparts; this has been regarded as indirect evidence of the existence of acupoints and the energy-based model of diseases. In order to investigate the potential application of acupoint-skin conductance measurement that may reflect pathology of ischemic stroke, the present study recruited 34 stroke survivors with hemiparesis, whose skin conductance of a hand acupoint and an adjacent non-acupoint and the finger temperature in both affected and unaffected hands were simultaneously measured; the data revealed that the skin conductance and finger temperature were statistically higher in the unaffected hand than that of the affected, and the skin conductance of the acupoint and the non-acupoint were comparable in the affected and unaffected hands respectively. We attribute the observed drop in the skin conductance to the diminished peripheral blood flow of the affected hand that is signified by relatively lower finger temperature.