Acupuncture and moxibustion for lateral elbow pain: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Fu-Chun Wang¹  Chris Zaslawski²  Hua Liu³  Ka-Fai Chung⁴  Wing-Fai Yeung⁴  Sergio Bangrazi⁵  Zhao-Xiang Bian⁶  Shi-Ping Zhang⁷  Marcus Gadau⁷  Yuan-Sheng Tan⁸ 

[1] Changchun University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jilin, China;From the Tennis Elbow Acupuncture International Study-China, (TEA-IS-CHAI) group, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy;College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia;From the Tennis Elbow Acupuncture International Study-China, (TEA-IS-CHAI) group, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy;Department of Neurology, the Second Clinical Medical College of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, China;Department of Psychiatry, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China;Instituto Paracelso, Roma, Italy;From the Tennis Elbow Acupuncture International Study-China, (TEA-IS-CHAI) group, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy;School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, SAR, China;School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, SAR, China;From the Tennis Elbow Acupuncture International Study-China, (TEA-IS-CHAI) group, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy;World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Societies, Beijing, China;From the Tennis Elbow Acupuncture International Study-China, (TEA-IS-CHAI) group, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy;

关键词: Epicondylitis;    Tennis elbow;    Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs);    STRICTA;    PRISMA;    Cochrane risk of bias tool;    Chinese literature;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-14-136

 received in 2013-09-19, accepted in 2014-02-13,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAcupuncture and moxibustion have widely been used to treat lateral elbow pain (LEP). A comprehensive systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) including both English and Chinese databases was conducted to assess the efficacy of acupuncture and moxibustion in the treatment of LEP.MethodsRevised STRICTA (2010) criteria were used to appraise the acupuncture procedures, the Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess the methodological quality of the studies. A total of 19 RCTs that compared acupuncture and/or moxibustion with sham acupuncture, another form of acupuncture, or conventional treatment were included.ResultsAll studies had at least one domain rated as high risk or uncertain risk of bias in the Cochrane risk of bias tool. Results from three RCTs of moderate quality showed that acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture. Results from 10 RCTs of mostly low quality showed that acupuncture or moxibustion was superior or equal to conventional treatment, such as local anesthetic injection, local steroid injection, non-steroidal anti- inflammatory drugs, or ultrasound. There were six low quality RCTs that compared acupuncture and moxibustion combined with manual acupuncture alone, and all showed that acupuncture and moxibustion combined was superior to manual acupuncture alone.ConclusionModerate quality studies suggest that acupuncture is more effective than sham acupuncture. Interpretations of findings regarding acupuncture vs. conventional treatment, and acupuncture and moxibustion combined vs. manual acupuncture alone are limited by the methodological qualities of these studies. Future studies with improved methodological design are warranted to confirm the efficacy of acupuncture and moxibustion for LEP.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Gadau et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.