Efficacy and safety of stellate ganglion block in chronic ulcerative colitis

AIM: To investigate the efficacy and safety of stellate ganglion block for the treatment of patients with chronic ulcerative colitis. METHODS: A total of 120 randomly selected patients with chronic ulcerative colitis treated in Cangzhou Central Hospital from January 2014 to January 2016 were included in this study. These patients were divided into two groups: control group (n = 30), patients received oral sulfasalazine treatment; experimental group (n = 90), patients received stellate ganglion block treatment. Clinical symptoms and disease activity in these two groups were compared before and after treatment using endoscopy. Blood was collected from patients on day 0, 10, 20 and 30 after treatment. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was performed to determine interleukin-8 (IL-8) level. The changes in IL-8 level post-treatment in the two groups were compared using repeated measures analysis of variance. RESULTS: After treatment, clinical symptoms and disease activity were shown to be alleviated by endoscopy in both the control and experimental groups. However, patients in the control group did not have obvious abdominal pain relief. In addition, the degree of pain relief in the experimental group was statistically better than that in the control group (P < 0.05). Ten days after treatment, IL-8 level was found to be significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). In addition, adverse events were significantly higher in the control group than in the experimental group, and the difference was statistically significant (χ(2) = 33.215, P = 0.000). CONCLUSION: The application of stellate ganglion block effectively improves treatment efficacy in chronic ulcerative colitis, relieves clinical symptoms in patients, and reduces the level of inflammatory factors. Furthermore, this approach also had a positive impact on the disease to a certain extent.