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Reporting Characteristics and Quality of Systematic Reviews of Acupuncture Analgesia
Author(s) -
Li Xiuxia,
Wang Rong,
Shi Xiue,
Su Jinlong,
Pan Yuanqing,
Tian Jinhui,
Yang Kehu
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
pain practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.899
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1533-2500
pISSN - 1530-7085
DOI - 10.1111/papr.12555
Subject(s) - medicine , acupuncture , protocol (science) , systematic review , medline , publication bias , meta analysis , cochrane library , sample size determination , physical therapy , quality (philosophy) , alternative medicine , medical physics , family medicine , statistics , pathology , mathematics , political science , law , philosophy , epistemology
Background Evaluating the clinical efficacy of acupuncture analgesia with systematic reviews ( SR s) has attracted wide interest. Objective To collect a sample of published SR s on acupuncture analgesia in PubMed and examine them in terms of reporting characteristics and quality. Methods A search in PubMed was performed in January 2016. All SR s on acupuncture analgesia were included. To assess the quality of the SR s, AMSTAR tool and PRISMA Statements were used. Results One hundred and nine SR s were included in our analysis, the yearly number of publications ranging from 1 in 1997 to 15 in 2015. Only 17% of these publications were Cochrane Systematic Reviews, and 94% were published in Science Citation Index journals. The United Kingdom was the country with the higher number of publications. Low back pain, headache, cancer pain, and labor pain were the most reported diseases or phenotypes. Nearly 73% of these SR s conducted a meta‐analysis, 58% revealed positive results, 53% used RevMan software to analyze data, and 44% used the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool for quality assessment. Only a few SR s assessed the likelihood of publication bias, reported details about the protocol and the registration information, and performed additional analyses. Conclusions The quantity and the quality of SR s regarding acupuncture analgesia have been promoted in recent years. More effort should be expended on the assessment of publication bias, the provision of detailed information about the protocol and the registration process, and the implementation of additional analyses to improve the validity of the SR s.