• Complement Ther Clin Pract · May 2020

    Meta Analysis

    Efficacy and safety of moxibustion for chronic low back pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

    • Feng-Qin Chen, Jian-Feng Ge, Yu-Fei Leng, Cheng Li, Bin Chen, and Zhi-Ling Sun.
    • School of Nursing, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, 210000, China.
    • Complement Ther Clin Pract. 2020 May 1; 39: 101130.

    IntroductionTo systematically review and meta-analyze the efficacy of moxibustion in treating patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP).MethodsA systematic search of the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, EBSCO, CBM, Wanfang, CNKI and VIP (until November, 2019) was used to identify studies reporting pain intensity (VAS or NRS), disability (ODI or RMDQ), JOA score, and quality of life (SF-36) in patients with CLBP. Study selection, data extraction was performed critically and independently by two reviewers. Cochrane criteria for risk of bias was used to assess the methodological quality of the trials. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation Methodology (GRADE) was applied to test the quality of evidence from the quantitative analysis.ResultsTen RCTs, including 987 patients, met the inclusion criteria. Moxibustion had a superior effect on VAS score when compared with western medicine [RR = -1.69, 95%CI(-2.40, -0.98), p < 0.00001] and acupuncture [RR = -0.47, 95%CI(-0.92, -0.02), p=0.04], but it failed to do so when compared with core stability training [RR = -0.41, 95%CI(-0.87, 0.05), p=0.08]. The result showed that moxibustion plus other active treatments (including western medicine, massage, acupuncture and core stability training) had better effects on low back pain relief compared with active treatments alone. Moxibustion showed favourable effects on disability [SMD = -3.80, 95%CI (-5.49, -2.11), p < 0.0001], JOA score [MD = 4.10, 95%CI(2.30, 5.90), p < 0.00001], and SF-36 score [MD = 13.41, 95%CI(9.68, 17.14), p < 0.00001]. The evidence level of the results from the ten studies was determined to be very low to low.ConclusionsIt is difficult to draw firm conclusions that moxibustion is an effective intervention for treating CLBP due to the small sample size of eligible trails and the high risk of bias among the available articles. Rigorously designed large-scale RCTs are required to further confirm the results in this review.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…