Case Report: Improvement of 3 Stroke Patients Through Integrative Medicine Based on Scalp Acupuncture

A stroke is a condition where an ischemic injury occurs in the brain tissue due to blockage or rupture of cerebral blood vessels.The damage to the brain nerve cells caused by a stroke is irreversible.Significant recovery is generally observed within the first six months after the onset, but the natural recovery rate decreases after six months.Therefore, intensive rehabilitation therapy is necessary within the first six months of the onset.This case report presents three cases of patients in the sequelae phase of stroke, where treatments based on integrative medicine system between traditional Korean medicine and Western medicine were applied.The treatments included scalp acupuncture from traditional Korean medicine and rehabilitation exercises and electrical therapy from Western medicine.In this case report, we evaluated the Manual Muscle Test (MMT), Modified Barthel Index (MBI), and the patients' subjective symptom interviews before and after the implementation of the integrative treatment.As a result, significant improvements in MMT and MBI were observed in acute stroke cases, whereas the improvement was minimal in cases with chronic progression.However, in all cases, the patients expressed high satisfaction with the treatment during the interviews.