Author(s)

Xia Li^#, Fei Wang^#, Yan Qin, Erdi Wang, Jie Zhang^*

Affiliation(s)

Shanghai Municipal Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 200071, China.

Corresponding Author

Jie Zhang

ABSTRACT

Objective: The objective of the study is to assess the effect of a combined therapy of electric heating and Bian stone use with functional constipation in aged patients aiming to come up with a non-drug teaching method and to obtain a subjective reference of applying the intervention of traditional Chinese medicine non-drug to treat chronic diseases. Methods: Sixty-six elderly constipated patients were recruited notwithstanding the inclusion criteria. The patients were randomly split into a group of patients undergoing stone therapy and a control group (n=33 each) using Stata 15.1 software. Both conditions were treated to conventional monotherapy, using lactulose and glycerol suppositories, and the control group also had the pseudo clinical nursing care. Moreover, the Bian stone therapy group went through an extensive course of electrotherapy using Bian stones. This system involved the use of Chinese herbal medicine as a vehicle, the application of acupoints, and localized four energy methods, including rubbing, vibration, tapping, and warming. The treatment was done as 20 minutes per day during a 10-day course of the therapy. The scores of constipation symptoms were measured in both groups before the treatment and in day five and day ten. Symptomatic efficacy and quality of life were also observed by the time to the first bowel movement after treatment. Results: The overall efficacy rate of the stone treatment group, at the end of the treatment, was 93.94% which was much better than that of the control group, which was 54.84. Median time taken to pass bowel movement was 18hours in the stone therapy group and 34hours in the control group and the differences were statistically significant (P<0.01). Day 5 of treatment, both groups proved to have a significant improvement in the constipation symptom score levels with the stone therapy group proving better than the other in terms of the time to first bowel movement score, feeling of incomplete evacuation score, and the abdominal distension score (P < 0.05). Compared to the situation prior to the intervention, quality of life symptom scores improved in both groups following the intervention (P < 0.01) and stone therapy but not the control group had significantly lower scores across all domains (P < 0.01). Conclusions: To treat functional constipation of older patients, a combination of conventional clinical and electro-therapeutic stone therapy has better effects. The approach reduces the time to the first bowel movement by a significant margin, decreases the symptoms of constipation, and increases the quality of life of patients. Hence, electric-therapeutic stone method has unique paths to cure functional constipation among elderly people.

KEYWORDS

Electro-heated stone therapy; Elderly; Functional constipation; Non-pharmacological traditional Chinese medicine therapy; Clinical efficacy

CITE THIS PAPER

Xia Li, Fei Wang, Yan Qin, Erdi Wang, Jie Zhang. The efficacy of electrotherapy with Bian stone in treating functional constipation in the elderly. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Medical Research. 2025, 7(3): 50-55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.61784/jpmr3056.

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