Fu's Subcutaneous Needling Treatment for Hemiplegic Shoulder Pain

The post-stroke survivors suffered from shoulder pain are very common. The investigators performed Fu's subcutaneous needling (FSN). This experiment used a randomized controlled trial to assess the immediate, short-term and long-term effects of Fu's subcutaneous needling therapy on hemiplegic shoulder pain in patient with stroke.

The prevalence of complication in post-stroke survivors is 30-96%. Post-stroke pain is the most common complication. According to previous researches there are sixty percent post-stroke survivors who suffered from upper limb pain. The mechanism causes post-stroke shoulder pain is imbalance of shoulder muscles and in-coordination of shoulder motor control due to cerebral vascular disease. Post-stroke shoulder pain often causes the limitation of shoulder range of motion, and the pain always affected quality of life and daily activities. Because of shoulder pain, those post-stroke survivors postponed the program of rehabilitation. The treatments of post-stroke shoulder pain are transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, drug, intra-articular injection and nerve block. Acupuncture with combination of rehabilitation has been proved by many researches in alleviating pain and increasing quality of life in treating post-stroke shoulder pain. Fu's subcutaneous needling is a newly technique based on meridian theory and the technique is used to treat cervical, lumbar and four limb's pain proved by many researches. Fu's subcutaneous needling in managing post-stroke pain has less reported, so investigator set up a proposal to see if the Fu's subcutaneous needling could elevate more therapeutic effect compared to usual care or not. The investigators will enroll patients into two groups, experimental and control groups. The interventions in experimental group are Fu's subcutaneous needling in combination with rehabilitation, and in control group is rehabilitation. The trial will extend two weeks, and investigator will treat with Fu's subcutaneous needling three times in the first, second and fourth day when the patients include to our trial. The outcome measurements are visual analog scale, range of motion of shoulder, pressure pain threshold of myofascial trigger point, acromion-greater tuberosity distance, Fugl-Meyer assessment in upper extremity and functional independence measure.