At first, the needles may seem scary to children, while parents may not be convinced that an ancient Chinese treatment will help with their child’s problem.

WWL-TV

But a doctor practicing at Children's Hospital says the treatment is not only changing children's minds, but healing their bodies as well.

It wasn't quite two years ago back on January 18, 2007 when we first visited a Rummel sophomore who was fighting his way back from a stroke.  Doctors had given Rolonzo Gooden a 40 percent chance of survival the day he collapsed during football practice.

After a year and a half of physical and occupational therapy, Eyewitness News revisited Rolonzo on September 24, 2008 at Children's Hospital. Now 17, Rolonzo is back in school and slowly trying to get back to normal.

"I have trouble reading, I want to say a word but I just can't say it," he said. 

After the stroke Rolonzo had trouble using his entire right side, now he's regained much of that except for his right hand which remains clenched with spasms.

"I was right handed but now I've got to write with my left hand and I'm getting pretty good at it so," he said.

So he's turned to a treatment at Children's hospital that is the only one of its kind in the south. An Asian treatment that parents are not used to seeing performed on their children.

"It's hard convincing parents to get that type of treatment for themselves,” said Dr. Carl Robinson. “There's a phobia, a needle phobia, but the needles are so small and they're sterile and they don't have medications on them.”

While Dr. Robinson was evacuated for Hurricane Katrina, he studied to also become a licensed acupuncturist. And now he says his young patients are benefiting.

Rolonzo says it has already helped him with the use of his right hand.

Robinson thinks acupuncture can also help other children’s issues – like bedwetting, though he isn’t certain exactly why.

"Well I wish I knew the answer to that.  There are a thousand studies out there but nobody's been able to really pin it down  but we do know is from  at least 2,500 years of experience that the Chinese have had and hundreds of years of experience that the Japanese have had,  that it does work," says Dr. Robinson.

One patient’s bed wetting condition has gone from nearly every night to just once a week since getting acupuncture with electro-stimulation.

One thing Dr. Robinson says scientific studies do show is that when fake acupuncture is compared to real acupuncture it is not as effective as the real treatment.

Still probably the biggest hurdle is getting a child past the anxiety of the first needle.

"Once they've had it, that fear is gone," says Dr. Robinson.

There are more than 50 conditions that acupuncture can be used for. Some of them are pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia, fatigue, cancer and nausea.

Rolonzo Gooden, the young man who had the stroke will go to the White House this March to meet President Obama for his bravery as a patient at Children's Hospital.