Reporting Characteristics and Quality of Systematic Reviews of Acupuncture Analgesia.

BACKGROUND: Evaluating the clinical efficacy of acupuncture analgesia with systematic reviews (SRs) has attracted wide interest.

OBJECTIVE: To collect a sample of published SRs on acupuncture analgesia in PubMed and examine them in terms of reporting characteristics and quality.

METHODS: A search in PubMed was performed in January 2016. All SRs on acupuncture analgesia were included. To assess the quality of the SRs, AMSTAR tool and PRISMA Statements were used.

RESULTS: One hundred and nine SRs were included in our analysis, the yearly number of publications ranging from 1 in 1997 to 15 in 2015. Only 17% of these publications were Cochrane Systematic Reviews, and 94% were published in Science Citation Index journals. The United Kingdom was the country with the higher number of publications. Low back pain, headache, cancer pain, and labor pain were the most reported diseases or phenotypes. Nearly 73% of these SRs conducted a meta-analysis, 58% revealed positive results, 53% used RevMan software to analyze data, and 44% used the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool for quality assessment. Only a few SRs assessed the likelihood of publication bias, reported details about the protocol and the registration information, and performed additional analyses.

CONCLUSIONS: The quantity and the quality of SRs regarding acupuncture analgesia have been promoted in recent years. More effort should be expended on the assessment of publication bias, the provision of detailed information about the protocol and the registration process, and the implementation of additional analyses to improve the validity of the SRs.