Traditional Chinese Medicine comprehensive therapy for the improvement of motor function in spinal cord injury patients.

OBJECTIVE: To study the effect of early comprehensive therapy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) on motor function of in patients with spinal cord injury. METHODS: Fifty-one standard spinal cord injury patients with paraplegia were randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. The experimental group received TCM comprehensive therapy, and the control group received modern Western Medicine (WM) treatment for 4 weeks. The motor score (MS), Barthel Index (BI) and American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) grading were measured in both groups before and after treatment. RESULTS: After treatment, the MS and BI scores of the TCM comprehensive therapy group improved significantly (P < 0.01), and there was no significant difference in ASIA grading (P > 0.05). The differences between the experimental and control groups after treatment were not significant (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Early TCM comprehensive therapy is an effective method for improving motor function in patients with spinal cord injury.