Opinion/Feedback

The patients in the neurological rehabilitation service are often in pain and anxious. To take care of them, some alternatives to medicine are being tested, especially to limit their side effects.

A project of an energetic resonance by cutaneous stimulation service development, based on Chinese medicine, was started in 2013. It is about getting the feedback of the first patients taken care of.

Energetic resonance by cutaneous stimulation is a multiprofessional project, associating doctors, chemists, health executives, and nursing staff. Four sessions are planned by the procedure. Pain is quantified thanks to the Visual Analog Scale (VAS); as for anxiety, it is quantified thanks to the Covi anxiety scale. During each session, data are saved on an Excel file like the session date and length, anxiety before and after, pain before and after, feeling of the patient. The chemist service follows constantly the painkiller, tranquilliser and antiemetic consumption, and this from a month before the first session to a month following the last one, thanks to the administrations indicated on Cristalnet software.

Three nurses were trained in the service.

Eight patients benefited from this program: 5 for pain, 1 for anxiety, 1 for insomnia and 1 for nauseas and vomitings.

On average, each patient benefited from 3.9 sessions of about 33 minutes (± 7 minutes). When the patient is in pain, the average VAS reduction is of about −2.9 ± 2.2. When the patient is anxious at the beginning of the session, the average reduction of anxiety (on the covi scale) is about −2.9 ± 2.3. The patients’ feedback is positive and the reduction of medicinal treatment is noticeable. For example, paracetamol use decreases by 1000 mg ± 500.

Despite the limits of the study (observation study without any control group), these results are encouraging.

Energetic resonance by cutaneous stimulation seems to be beneficial for the patient even if it is difficult to assess objectively what is linked to the technique itself, to touch, to the care and support given to the patient and/or to the spontaneous evolution of the patient’s state of health.