The Relationship between Acupuncture Effects and Autonomic Nervous System by Heart Rate Variability-Frozen Shoulder Patients as Examples

• Main Authors: Ya-Zu Hu, 胡雅筑
• Other Authors: Chiung-Cheng Chuang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/02716201934260272228

碩士 === 中原大學 === 生物醫學工程研究所 === 99 === The main symptom of frozen shoulder is persistent shoulder pain, and such pain would increase with shoulder joint movement while the range of joint movement would be limited as well. Frozen shoulder severely reduces a person’s quality of life. Provided that an individual has frozen shoulder for awhile, atrophy of muscles surrounding shoulder joint can also be seen due to movement reduction in the long term. In 1979, the World Health Organization (WHO) conjured a list of 43 types of diseases that are treatable by acupuncture. This list, based on clinical experiences and researches, includes frozen shoulder. This study consists of 15 sample patients – 4 males and 11 females - with an average age of 58 years old. Patients are treated with sham acupuncture first then they are treated with true acupuncture. Before and after the acupuncture treatments, the following physiology parameters were measured: HRV (Heart rate variability), ROM (Range of motion), blood pressure, static pain(Visual-Analogue Scale) and dynamic pain(VAS with ROM). With the above method, we investigate the effect of acupuncture on Frozen Shoulder patients and further discuss the relationship of Frozen Shoulder and HRV. The result shows that while angle of flexion, angle of internal rotation, static pain, flexion pain, external rotation pain and internal rotation pain show significant improvement after true acupuncture, angle of internal rotation, static pain and internal rotation pain significantly decreased after sham acupuncture. After true acupuncture treatment, there was a negative correlation between the Mean value and static pain (correlation coefficient: -0.653, P=0.008) of HRV. Pain can stimulate sympathetic nerve activation, which accelerates heart rate. The result of this study shows that acupuncture can decrease level of frozen shoulder pain, sympathetic nerve would no longer be stimulated by pain, heart rate would decrease, and the Mean value would increase. We conclude that acupuncture is effective for frozen shoulder and the Mean value of HRV parameters may be used as a method of assessing patient’s pain.