Background: Radiotherapy is the cornerstone in cancer treatment, and its adverse effects have been recognized widely nowadays. In response, effective and nontoxic therapies are in demand for patients affected by radiotherapy-induced adverse effects (RIAE). As a multitude of clinical studies have suggested that acupuncture therapies seem to be potential in treating RIAE, this study aims to make a systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis (NMA) to evaluate effectiveness and safety of different acupuncture treatments.
Methods: A full-scale search will be performed in the following databases from inception to June, 2020: PubMed/Medline, Cochrane library, Web of Science, Ebsco, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Database, VIP Database and China Biology Medicine disc (CBM). Randomized controlled trials meeting the eligible criteria based on PICOS elements will be included. The primary outcome is the response rate of RIAE or the incidence of RIAE. The secondary outcome is the incidence of adverse events directly related to acupuncture. Cochrane risk-of-bias tool (ROB 2.0) will be employed to evaluate the quality of chosen literatures. Stata, Addis and OpenBUGS will be performed to manage data.
Discussion: The results can provide a relatively objective evidence to assess effectiveness and safety of acupuncture therapies for each RIAE, which may be rewarding as a guiding proposal for researchers concerning RIAE.
Trial registration: This study has been registered at INPLASY (https://inplasy.com/) with a registration ID INPLASY202070054.
Keywords: Acupuncture therapy; network meta-analysis (NMA); radiotherapy-induced adverse effects (RIAE).