The effect of traditional Chinese massage on cerebral blood flow of stroke patients as revealed by SPECT

Objective To study the effect of traditional Chinese massage on the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in stroke patients. Methods The rCBF of six stroke patients before and after Chinese massage was measured and analyzed by using the semi quantitative analysis of single photon emission computed tomography( SPECT). Results There were decreased rCBF in varying degrees occurred in 6 stroke patients before the massage. A significant difference of rCBF after the Chinese massage was seen on contralateral frontal and parietal lobes,ipsilateral white matter of brain( P 0.05 ), as compared with that of pretreatment state. The SPECT image showed that the improvement of rCBF was better in the surrounding area than in the center of the lesion.More remarkable changes of rCBF were seen in patients with small size and mild lesions. The change of semi quantitative score of cerebral blood flow and function induced by massage as evaluated with SPECT was very marked, which was -27±16 and -12±17, respectively ( P 0.05). Conclusion Traditional Chinese massage has affirmative effect on the improvement of rCBF in stroke patients. We inferred that the effect of massage was related to the somatosensorial stimulation,and in turn, can reflexly affect the reaction at each level of the nervous system.