• Runjing Dai, Jie Zhang, Hailiang Zhang, Na Zhao, Fujian Song, and Jingchun Fan.
• School of Public Health, Center for Evidence-Based Medicine.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2020 May 29; 99 (22): e20295e20295.

BackgroundTobacco epidemic remains a major challenge to public health, with >7 million deaths attributable to tobacco smoking p.a. Quitting smoking is a proven way of reducing the harm of smoking. Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), auricular acupressure and acupuncture are used for quit smoking, but it remains to be explored which is relatively more effective. Furthermore, a Bayesian network meta-analysis will be applied to determine the relative effects and/or safety of different smoking cessation treatments.Methods/DesignA literature search for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) will be performed in five electronic databases from inception to December 2019, including PubMed, the Cochrane library, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Chinese Biomedical Database (SinoMed). Cochrane Collaboration quality assessment tool will be used for the risk of bias assessment. A Bayesian network meta-analysis will be performed using WinBUGS 1.4.3, and Stata 14 will be applied to draw the network diagram, while RevMan 5.3.5 will be used to produce funnel plot for assessing the risk of publication bias. Recommended rating, development and grade methodology will also be utilized to assess the quality of evidence.ResultsWe will evaluate the effect of different smoking cessation treatments (e.g., acupuncture, auricular acupressure, and NRT) by directly traditional meta-analysis and indirectly Bayesian network meta-analysis.ConclusionOur study will provide smokers with the available evidence on the efficacy and safety of quitting regimens.

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