[A systematic review of randomized controlled clinical trials of abdominal acupuncture treatment of cervical spondylosis].

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effect and methodological quality of clinically randomized controlled studies on abdominal acupuncture therapy for cervical spondylosis and to make out its current situation, validity and applicability. METHODS: Using the PubMed, CNKI (China Academic Journals Full-text Database), VIP (VIP Chinese Science and Technology Periodicals Database) and Wanfang Digital Periodicals Electronic Database covering the period of 1989-2009, we did a literature search on the original articles of abdominal acupuncture treatment of cervical spondylosis and selected those accorded with the standards of randomized controlled studies. Animal studies, surveys, and news articles, and those duplicated, being absent in diagnostic criteria and non-randomized controlled trials were excluded. The papers' quality was analyzed by using the Jadad quality assessment scoring system and the therapeutic effect evaluated by using Review Manage 4.2.7 software. RESULTS: A total of 8 papers containing 909 cervical spondylosis patients and written in Chinese were included. These 8 studies used the effective rate as the primary outcome, 2 of them used the McGill Pain Questionnaire scales at the same time. Meta-analysis showed that the abdominal acupuncture group was better than the control group in visual analogue scale score (P < 0.05). No significant differences were found between abdominal acupuncture and routine acupuncture [OR = 3.29, 95% CI (0.13, 82.99)], EA [OR = 2.09, 95% CI (0.36, 11.95)] and traction therapy [OR = 6.06, 95% CI (3.01, 12.18)] in the total effective rate, pain rating index score [WMD = -2.24, 95% CI (-5.29, 0.81)] and the present pain intensity score [WMD = -0.84, 95% CI (-2.13, 0.44)]. CONCLUSION: At the present, there has been no sufficient evidence to ensure that in the treatment of cervical spondylosis, the abdominal acupuncture therapy is superior to routine acupuncture, EA and traction therapy. Attention should be paid to the randomized controlled study of larger samples and qualified design.