Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To assess the effectiveness of acupuncture therapy for
shoulder-hand syndrome.
METHODS:
According to the requirements of evidence-based
medicine, papers of randomized controlled clinical trials for shoulder-hand
syndrome published in China from 2005 to 2010 collected by databases VIP,
Wanfang, CNKI, collections of papers of academic conferences, etc. were
retrieved by using key words of shoulder-hand syndrome, reflex sympathetic
dystrophy, acupuncture, moxibustion. Then the collected documents were given
with Jaded score, and analyzed by using software Manager 5. 0 Review Cochrane.
RESULTS:
A total of 100 papers were retrieved. Among them, 29
papers that met our inclusion criteria were given with Jaded scores (2 points
for 2 papers, 1 point for the rest 27 papers, being low in quality). Twenty-one
papers were brought into Meta analysis. These papers contain 1 768 cases of
patients who were divided into three sets of groups according to the used
intervention measures. Meta-analysis showed that simple acupuncture therapy is
significantly superior to acupoint block therapy for relieving shoulder-hand
syndrome [odds ratio (OR, 95% CI) 4.80 (2.02 to 11.41), P < 0.05];
electroacupuncture therapy is markedly more effective than simple acupuncture
therapy [OR (95% CI) 4.60 (2.08 to 10. 17), P < 0.05]; and acu-moxibustion
combined with other therapies is significantly more effective than simple
acupuncture therapy [OR (95% CI) 3.31 (2. 30 to 4.77), P < 0.05]. The other
8 papers were not brought into Meta-analysis due to being different to the 21
papers in the intervention measures.
CONCLUSION:
Acupuncture can effectively relieve
shoulder-hand syndrome in pain, wrist- and shoulder-joint motor, etc. But,
larger size of samples and high quality randomized clinical trials are needed
for providing more reliable conclusive evidence.
