Song Hyun Jin, Choi Sun Mi, Seo Hyun-Ju, Lee Heeyoung, Son Heejeong, Lee Sanghun
1 School of Pharmacy, Sungkyunkwan University , Suwon, South Korea .
J Altern Complement Med. 2015 Feb;21(2):69-76. doi: 10.1089/acm.2014.0166. Epub 2015 Jan 30.
To systematically review the effect of self-administered foot reflexology in patients with chronic health conditions.
Electronic databases were searched for literature published from 1948 to January 2014. The databases included MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, CINAHL, CNKI, J-STAGE, Koreamed, Kmbase, KISS, NDSL, KISTI, and OASIS. Key search terms were "exp/relaxation therapy," "foot," "reflexology," "zone therapy," and "self." All study designs were included. Two raters independently extracted data and assessed study quality by using the Cochrane risk of bias tool (for randomized controlled trials) and the risk of bias assessment tool for nonrandomized studies (for nonrandomized and before-and-after studies). A qualitative and descriptive analysis was performed because of the clinical diversity associated with chronic health conditions.
Of the 224 records assessed, 4 trials met the inclusion criteria: 3 nonrandomized controlled trials and 1 before-and-after study without comparison. Self-administered foot reflexology might have a positive effect in type 2 diabetes, but the low quality of the included study and the lack of adequately reported clinical outcomes obscure the results. Two studies of hypertensive patients and 1 study of patients with urinary incontinence showed that self-performed foot reflexology may exert a beneficial effect on lowering blood pressure and urinary incontinence; however, given the small sample size and the lack of any description of medications and other cointerventions, there was insufficient evidence to conclusively determine whether foot reflexology had any effect.
The included studies on self-administered foot reflexology in patients with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or urinary incontinence provided insufficient evidence to determine a treatment effect. Therefore, a well-designed, large-scale, and randomized controlled trial is needed to confirm the effect of self-administered foot reflexology for chronic conditions.
系统评价自我足部反射疗法对慢性疾病患者的疗效。
检索1948年至2014年1月发表的文献的电子数据库。这些数据库包括MEDLINE、EMBASE、Cochrane图书馆、CINAHL、中国知网、J-STAGE、韩国医学、Kmbase、KISS、NDSL、韩国科技信息研究院和OASIS。关键检索词为“实验/放松疗法”、“足部”、“反射疗法”、“区域疗法”和“自我”。纳入所有研究设计。两名评价员独立提取数据，并使用Cochrane偏倚风险工具（用于随机对照试验）和非随机研究偏倚风险评估工具（用于非随机研究和前后对照研究）评估研究质量。由于慢性疾病相关的临床多样性，进行了定性和描述性分析。
在评估的224条记录中，4项试验符合纳入标准：3项非随机对照试验和1项无对照的前后对照研究。自我足部反射疗法可能对2型糖尿病有积极作用，但纳入研究的质量较低且缺乏充分报告的临床结局，使结果不明确。两项关于高血压患者的研究和一项关于尿失禁患者的研究表明，自我进行足部反射疗法可能对降低血压和尿失禁有有益作用；然而，鉴于样本量小且缺乏对药物和其他联合干预措施的任何描述，没有足够的证据来最终确定足部反射疗法是否有任何效果。
纳入的关于2型糖尿病、高血压或尿失禁患者自我足部反射疗法的研究提供的证据不足，无法确定治疗效果。因此，需要进行一项设计良好、大规模的随机对照试验，以证实自我足部反射疗法对慢性疾病的疗效。
