Taohong Siwu decoction for femoral head necrosis: A protocol for systematic review

Femoral head necrosis is one of the most common orthopedic diseases which can be diagnosed in all ages with different reasons. Taohong Siwu decoction (TSD) has been widely used in the treatment of femoral head necrosis. However, as far as we know, there is still a lack of supporting evidence regarding the efficacy of TSD for femoral head necrosis. Therefore, this protocol aims to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of TSD for femoral head necrosis.

Eight electronic databases, including PubMed, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, EMBASE, Web of Science, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Technology Periodical database, (Chinese Scientific Journal Database) and Wanfang Database will be searched from the time when the respective databases were established to January 2020. Randomized controlled trials of TSD in the treatment of femoral head necrosis will be collected. After evaluating the quality of methodology and extracting valid data, the final meta-analysis will be carried out with software Revman 5.3.

The results of this systematic review will offer implications of the use of TSD treatment for Femoral Head Necrosis. It uses aggregated published data instead of individual patient data and does not require an ethical board review and approval. The findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and disseminated in conference presentations.

The results of this study will offer implications of the use of TSD treatment for FHN with this meta-analysis.

The conclusion of this study will provide recent evidence to assess whether TSD is effective and safe in the treatment of FHN.