[A meta analysis on acupuncture treatment of shoulder-hand syndrome]

To assess the effectiveness of acupuncture therapy for shoulder-hand syndrome.

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 Jadad score, and analyed by using software Manager 5. 0 Review Cochrane.

A total of 100 papers were retrieved. Among them, 29 papers that met our inclusion criteria were given with Jadad 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.

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.