Published online Apr 28, 2022. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v10.i2.52
Peer-review started: August 12, 2021
First decision: October 2, 2021
Revised: October 15, 2021
Accepted: March 5, 2022
Article in press: March 5, 2022
Published online: April 28, 2022
Processing time: 258 Days and 21.7 Hours
Seventy-five percent of patients with liver cancer suffer varying degrees of pain. Pain is widely perceived as the fifth vital sign in cancer patients, which seriously affects the quality of their life and threatens their survival. Acupuncture, part of traditional Chinese medicine, involves the application of needles, heat, pressure, and other treatments at specific sites of the body known as acupoints to affect the physical functions of the body. Numerous studies have concluded that acupuncture may be efficacious in relieving cancer-related pain. However, there is still no direct evidence on which method of acupuncture is more effective. The present study aimed to identify the best method of acupuncture for liver cancer-related pain. Further clinical evaluation of acupuncture for pain due to liver cancer is required and longer follow-up appears warranted. The comparisons of the effectiveness of different acupuncture therapies should be conducted.
The aim of our study was to compare the effectiveness of different acupuncture methods for alleviating pain due to liver cancer. In this study, we found that triple puncture and remaining needle acupuncture had the highest effectiveness. The finding of our study may provide evidence for directly comparing different methods of acupuncture for liver cancer related pain.
The present study aimed to identify the best method of acupuncture for liver cancer-related pain. The finding of our study may provide evidence for direct comparisons of different methods of acupuncture for liver cancer related pain.
In this network meta-analysis (NMA), the association of each acupuncture and related therapies with relief of pain due to liver cancer was compared using the combination of direct and indirect evidence from eight RCTs with 734 patients. An NMA provides a basis for synthesizing all the available evidence in a consistent framework, obviating the need to make decisions by subjective inferences from disparate data. However, our analysis represents the use of the most practical methods currently available to compare a large number of different types of treatment, thus enabling us to compare different methods of acupuncture with each other.
We conducted an NMA to analyze both direct and indirect comparisons of different methods of acupuncture for the relief of pain due to liver cancer. Based on the current evidence, we sorted and explored the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of acupuncture. Compared with traditional meta-analysis, the results of this study may provide a higher quality basis and reference for acupuncture treatment of pain due to liver cancer.
The evidence from our NMA, in which different methods of acupuncture for pain due to liver cancer were compared with each other within a coherent framework, suggests that the overall effectiveness of triple puncture and remaining needle acupuncture is better than that of other therapies. However, despite the evidence from this study, the methodological limitations associated with many of the trials indicate that high-quality trials of acupuncture treatments are still required.
Further clinical evaluation of acupuncture for pain due to liver cancer is required and longer follow-up appears warranted. The comparisons of the effectiveness of different acupuncture therapies should be conducted.