Sunday, June 1, 2008

Acupuncture And Moxibustion For Treatment Of Hydrocephalus: Report Of 30 Cases

Huang Shengyuan (Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Sichuan Medical College)

Preliminary therapeutic effectiveness has been obtained from a total of 30 cases of hydrocephalus treated with acupuncture and moxibustion.

Subjects: There were 23 males and 7 females. 7 cases were under six months of age, 11 were between six months and a year and the other 12 ranged from one to six years. The majority of the patients were first seen within a year after the discovery of abnormalities by the parents. Most of the patients had a history of fever, vomiting and diarrhea and a few of them had attacks of convulsion prior to treatment. The clinical features were: craniofacial disproportion, enlarged head circumference, bulging fontanella with tenseness (maximal size 22 X 21 cm), distended scalp veins, splitting of cranial sutures, "setting sun" eyes, "cracked pot" skull on percussion, mental retardation, impairment of vision and muscular weakness. Echo-encephalograms showed dilatation of lateral ventricles and skull films revealed evidence of chronic increase of intracranial pressure.


Methods: Acupuncture treatment was adopted for all patients and on certain occasions it was combined with warming and scarring moxibustions.

The insertion points were prescribed in three groups:

Group I: Tounao, Renying, Zhigou, Hegu, Shuifen, Abdomen-Yinjiao, Zhonji, Shuidao, Yinlingquan, Zusanli, Sanyinjiao, Fuliu.

Group II: Fengfu, Fengchi, Dazhui, Mingmin, Yaoshu, Yinmen, Weizhong, Chengshan and Juegu.

Group III: Tapping with "plum-blossom" needle was applied to areas alongside the spinal column until the skin became red.


Groups I and II were prescribed on alternate days each thrice a week, and Group III was applied daily.

These three groups were of basic prescriptions with slight modifications on rare occasions.

Results: After various period of treatment ranging from 10 to 240 times, therapeutic effects were confirmed in 27 cases by closure of frontal fontanelles and improvement in echo-encephalograms and skull films. The other 3 patients showed no remarkable change.

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