Acupuncture and its role in the treatment of ischemic stroke: A review

Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy that is treatment by placing a needle or pressure in a specific position on the patient's skin. Although used in the treatment of various diseases, acupuncture is effective in the treatment of ischemic stroke (IS), and has made some progress in the mechanism of action of the treatment of this disease. IS is difficult to treat, and there is a high rate of disability. Drug therapy is usually the first line of treatment, but adjuvant therapy has outstanding efficacy in promoting the rehabilitation of the disease and preventing sequelae. Among them, acupuncture is getting more and more attention as a more popular treatment method. Therefore, this study excavates the high-quality randomized controlled trials and meta-analysis of acupuncture for IS in recent years to further summarize the efficacy of acupuncture for IS. In this review, we provide an overview of the current understanding of acupuncture and IS, and the current studies investigating the effectiveness of acupuncture in the treatment of IS.