4 Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Table 2: Patient characteristics in the 2 groups. Gender, male (%) Age, yr (SD, median) Education, yr (SD, median) Handedness, right (%) Treatment period from onset, day (SD, median) Duration of treatment, weeks (SD, median) Hypertension (%) Diabetes mellitus (%) Dyslipidemia (%) Heart disease (%) AQ scores (SD, median) Total score Spontaneous speech Content delivery Fluency Comprehension Yes-no Auditory verbal comprehension Command performance Repetition Naming Naming things Control word association Sentence completion Sentence answers COT group (n = 47) 31 (66) 54.5 (12.1, 54) 10.8 (5.1, 12) 46 (97.9) 48 (45.4, 29) 6.6 (7.1, 4.9) 31 (65.96) 12 (25.53) 8 (17.02) 7 (14.89) 28.1 (25.6, 19.2) 5.5 (5.1, 3) 3.3 (2.8, 2) 2.2 (2.4, 1) 3.6 (2.9, 3.2) 32.1 (17.9, 33) 21.1 (20.9, 11) 19.8 (23.4, 10) 3.3 (3.6, 1.2) 1.9 (2.6, 0.5) 12.9 (17.9, 4) 1.2 (2.8, 0) 2.5 (3.6, 0) 1.9 (3.3, 0) OLT group (n = 30) 14 (46.7) 52.5 (17.6, 55.5) 11.2 (3.8, 12) 30 (100) 41 (28.7, 39) 7.8 (5.7, 6.4) 20 (66.67) 3 (10) 3 (10) 4 (13.33) 26.7 (26.2, 19) 5.7 (5.4, 5) 3.4 (3, 3) 2.5 (2.8, 1.5) 3.6 (2.7, 3.1) 29.6 (18.9, 32) 21.9 (20.4, 18.5) 19.7 (21.4, 12) 2.4 (3.4, 0.6) 1.6 (2.6, 0.2) 11.4 (18.1, 0.5) 1.2 (2.5, 0) 2 (3.3, 0) 1.7 (3.3, 0) P-value 0.104 0.790 0.918 1.000 0.954 0.104 1.000 0.140 0.513 1.000 0.875 0.757 0.987 0.928 0.979 0.645 0.892 0.834 0.179 0.405 0.457 0.510 0.472 0.670 COT group: group that received language therapy with oriental medicine therapy. OLT group: group that received language therapy only. AQ: aphasia Quotient. P value was obtained by the Mann-Whitney U test (age, education, treatment period from onset, duration of treatment, and AQ scores) and Fisher’s exact test (gender and handedness). SD: standard deviation. The Wilcoxon-signed rank test was performed to compare changes of AQ scores in each group. The McNemar test was performed to compare changes of the distribution of severity of aphasia. 3. Results 3.1. Baseline Assessment. Among the 77 participants, 47 were included in the COT group and 30 in the OLT group. However, the baseline characteristics of the two groups exhibited no signiﬁcant diﬀerences with regard to gender, age, education, handedness, treatment period from onset, and duration of language therapy. There was no signiﬁcant diﬀerence in stroke risk factors such as hypertension, dia- betes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and heart disease (Table 2). The total AQ score was 28.1 ± 25.6 in the COT group and 26.7 ± 26.2 in the OLT group. There were small diﬀerences in the total score between the 2 groups, which were not statisti- cally signiﬁcant. The subsection scores such as spontaneous speech, comprehension, repetition, and naming (naming things, control word association, sentence completion, and answers) demonstrated no statistically signiﬁcant diﬀerences either (Table 2). 3.2. Type of Stroke. In the COT group, there were 30 infarc- tion patients and 17 hemorrhage patients. In the OLT group, there were 14 infarction patients and 16 hemorrhage pa- tients. The proportion of cerebral infarction subtypes based on the TOAST (Trials of Org 10172 in Acute Stroke Treat- ment) classiﬁcation was not signiﬁcantly diﬀerent between the two groups (Table 3), nor was the proportion of cerebral hemorrhage subtypes (Table 3). 3.3. Type of Aphasia, and Related Symptoms. Twenty-ﬁve patients in the COT group and 16 patients in the OLT group had global aphasia at baseline. There was no signiﬁcant diﬀerence between the two groups. The proportions of other types of aphasia were not signiﬁcantly diﬀerent between the 2 groups either (Table 4). There were 12 patients in the COT group and 5 patients in the OLT group who had dysphagia, which can aﬀect aphasia. However, there was no signiﬁcant diﬀerence between the two groups (P = 0.412). Deafness and dysphonia were not found in these participants. 3.4. AQ Score before and after Treatment in the OLT Group. Before language therapy, the total AQ score was 26.7 ± 26.2 in the OLT group. After 7.8 ± 5.7 weeks of conventional therapy