Acupuncture for Treatment of Acute Spinal Cord Injury: an Exploratory/Developmental Study

Specific Aim: to implement and evaluate a research protocol for demonstrating the efficacy of Acupuncture Therapy to improve neurological recovery after incomplete SCI compared to a control protocol. Hypothesis: acupuncture treatment results in greater neurological recovery than a control treatment after an incomplete SCI. Before conducting a larger, more definitive study, this exploratory and developmental work is focused on assessing whether blinding is possible, reproducibility of the outcome measure, determine enrollment rates and effect sizes and identify clinical resources needed to conduct a larger study.