Acupotomy Therapy for Shoulder Adhesive Capsulitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Jianyu You; Fengyun Yang; Naigang Liu; Nana Tang; Ting Fang; Fushui Liu; Zhongyong Liu; Hongwu Xie

doi:10.1155/2019/2010816

Acupotomy Therapy for Shoulder Adhesive Capsulitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2019 Dec 13:2019:2010816. doi: 10.1155/2019/2010816. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Jianyu You¹, Fengyun Yang², Naigang Liu³, Nana Tang², Ting Fang¹, Fushui Liu², Zhongyong Liu², Hongwu Xie¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Acupuncture-Moxibustion and Tuina, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanchang, China.
² College of Clinical Medicine, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanchang, China.
³ China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Objective: Acupotomy therapy is widely used for pain management. However, the efficacy of acupotomy on shoulder adhesive capsulitis (SAC) is still uncertain. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness and safety of acupotomy therapy for SAC.

Methods: We searched seven electronic databases to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupotomy for SAC published before April 2019. A meta-analysis was performed according to the Cochrane systematic review method by using RevMan 5.3 software.

Results: A total of eight RCTs involving 501 patients were enrolled. Meta-analysis showed that acupotomy was significantly better than the control group in debasing the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score (MD = -0.97, 95% CI = [-1.49, -0.45], P=0.0003) and improving the Constant-Murley Score (CMS) (MD = 8.46, 95% CI = [1.04, 15.87], P=0.03), and there was no significant difference in adverse events (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = [0.34, 4.52], P=0.74) between the two groups.

Conclusion: Acupotomy therapy is an effective and safe treatment for SAC, and this treatment can be recommended for the management of SAC. Due to the low quality and small sample size of the included studies, more rigorously designed RCTs with high quality and large-scale are recommended in future.

Publication types

Review