OBJECTIVE To systematically evaluate the clinical efficacy of acupuncture treatment on the rehabilitation of motor function in patients with tendinopathy.
METHODS From the time of database establishment to March 2019, we searched and selected relevant literatures on randomized controlled trial (RCT) for the clinical efficacy and safety of acupuncture treatment on tendinopathy from electronic databases, including EMbase, Pubmed, The Cochrane library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WANFANG DATA, and China Biology Medicine disc (CBM). Then the basic information of the included literature was extracted and evaluated for quality, and Meta-analysis was performed using Revman 5.3 software.
RESULTS A total of 13 RCTs with 591 patients were included. The results of the Meta-analysis were as follows. The visual analog scale (VAS) showed that acupuncture treatment was effective in relieving tendinopathy pain. Besides, the pressure pain threshold score (PPT) test showed that acupuncture treatment was effective in improving the pressure pain threshold in tendinopathy. In addition, the range of motion score (ROM) showed that acupuncture treatment was effective in improving the range of joint motion in tendinopathy. Moreover, forest structure plots indicated stable results, and funnel plots showed little publication bias.
CONCLUSION Acupuncture treatment can reduce the pain of tendinopathy, increase the pressure pain threshold, as well as improve the range of joint motion and motor function, so it is an effective treatment for tendinopathy.
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