• Yingrong Zhang, Yanji Zhang, Xia Chen, Kou Xu, Mengyuan Huang, Sanchun Tan, and Zhongyu Zhou.
• Hubei University of Chinese Medicine/The Co-innovation Center for Preventive Treatment of Disease of Acupuncture-moxibustion in Hubei Province.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2021 Jan 8; 100 (1): e23951e23951.

BackgroundSciatica is a common and frequent peripheral neuropathic pain disease, which causes a great burden on peoples life. Recently, acupoint catgut embedding (ACE) has been widely applied for treating sciatica in China, however, there is no enough evidence to prove the efficiency and safety of ACE for sciatica. Our study aims to evaluate the efficiency and safety of ACE for sciatica.Methods And AnalysisSearches of the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Springer Medline, EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wan-Fang Data (WANFANG), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), and Chinese Scientific Journal Database (VIP databases) will be performed from inception to November 2020. The main outcomes are the pain intensity and the whole efficiency assessment. The secondary outcomes will include Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), life quality, physical examination, and adverse events. Two reviewers will separately conduct the study selection, data extraction and study quality assessments. RevMan 5.3 software will be used for meta-analysis.ResultsThis study will provide an evidence-based review of acupoint catgut embedding therapy for sciatica according to the pain intensity, the whole efficiency assessment, life quality, DOI index and adverse events.ConclusionsThis systematic review will present the current evidence for acupoint catgut embedding therapy for sciatica.Ethics And DisseminationEthical approval is unnecessary as this protocol is only for systematic review and does not involve privacy data. The findings of this study will be disseminated electronically through a peer-review publication or presented at a relevant conference.Trial Registration NumberINPLASY2020110087.Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

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