Efficacy and Safety of Fire Needle Therapy Combined With Cortex Phellodendri Compound Fluid Wet Compress for Acute Herpes Zoster: a Randomized Controlled Trial.

At the beginning of the fire needle therapy, the patient was instructed to exposure the lesion in a comfortable position. And the Ashi point (lesion area) was disinfected with iodophor. The 95% alcohol lamp was lit and held by the left hand. Then the needle was held by the right hand in the outer flame of the alcohol lamp to heat the needle body, making the tip of the needle whiten. Subsequently, the needle was quickly and accurately puncted into the base of the herpes at a depth of about 2-5 mm, straight in and out. According to the number of herpes, the early-onset herpes was puncted first, and about 5 to 10 blisters were selected for each puncture. The acupuncture was performed 1-5 times according to the size of the herpes. The treatment was performed once every other day for total 5 sessions.

For the Chinese herbal wet compress treatment, CPCF (Shandong Hanfang Pharmaceutical Co., LTD.) was decocted using forsythia, honeysuckle, phellodendron, dandelion, and centipede. Appropriate amount of liquid was diluted with 5 times the volume of water. Then according to the area of skin lesions, several pieces of medical fat-free cotton gauze with thickness of 8 layers were put into the liquid completely wet. After wringing out to a semi-dry state, the gauze was applied to the lesion for 15 minutes/time, 3 times a day, for 10 days.

The basic treatment consisted of penciclovir 0.5g/time per day intravenously, mecobalamin 0.5mg/time three times a day orally and pregabalin 75mg/time twice a day orally for 10 days.