Evangelical Clinics Essen-Mitte, Department of Internal and Integrative Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
Cancer. 2022 Jun 1;128(11):2159-2173. doi: 10.1002/cncr.34165. Epub 2022 Mar 8.
Acupuncture is frequently used to treat the side effects of cancer treatment, but the safety of this intervention remains uncertain. The current meta-analysis was conducted to assess the safety of acupuncture in oncological patients.
The PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Scopus databases were searched from their inception to August 7, 2020. Randomized controlled trials in oncological patients comparing invasive acupuncture with sham acupuncture, treatment as usual (TAU), or any other active control were eligible. Two reviewers independently extracted data on study characteristics and adverse events (AEs). Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool.
Of 4590 screened articles, 65 were included in the analyses. The authors observed that acupuncture was not associated an with increased risk of intervention-related AEs, nonserious AEs, serious AEs, or dropout because of AEs compared with sham acupuncture and an active control. Compared with TAU, acupuncture was not associated with an increased risk of intervention-related AEs, serious AEs, or drop out because of AEs but was associated with an increased risk for nonserious AEs (odds ratio, 3.94; 95% confidence interval, 1.16-13.35; P = .03). However, the increased risk of nonserious AEs compared with TAU was not robust against selection bias. The meta-analyses may have been biased because of the insufficient reporting of AEs in the original randomized controlled trials.
The current review indicates that acupuncture is as safe as sham acupuncture and active controls in oncological patients. The authors recommend researchers heed the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) safety and harm extension for reporting to capture the side effects and better investigate the risk profile of acupuncture in oncology.
According to this analysis, acupuncture is a safe therapy for the treatment of patients with cancer. Acupuncture seems to be safe compared with sham acupuncture and active controls.
针灸常用于治疗癌症治疗的副作用，但该干预措施的安全性仍不确定。本次荟萃分析旨在评估针灸在肿瘤患者中的安全性。
从建库到 2020 年 8 月 7 日，我们检索了 PubMed、Cochrane 对照试验中心注册库和 Scopus 数据库。纳入了比较针刺与假针刺、常规治疗（TAU）或任何其他活性对照治疗的肿瘤患者的随机对照试验。两位评审员独立提取研究特征和不良事件（AE）的数据。使用 Cochrane 偏倚风险工具评估偏倚风险。
在 4590 篇筛选文章中，有 65 篇被纳入分析。与假针刺和活性对照相比，作者观察到针刺与干预相关 AE、非严重 AE、严重 AE 或因 AE 而退出的风险无显著增加。与 TAU 相比，针刺与干预相关 AE、严重 AE 或因 AE 而退出的风险无显著增加，但与非严重 AE 的风险增加相关（比值比，3.94；95%置信区间，1.16-13.35；P =.03）。然而，与 TAU 相比，非严重 AE 的风险增加在选择偏倚方面并不稳健。由于原始随机对照试验中对 AE 的报告不足，荟萃分析可能存在偏倚。
本综述表明，针灸在肿瘤患者中与假针刺和活性对照一样安全。作者建议研究人员遵循 CONSORT（临床试验报告的统一标准）安全性和伤害扩展标准来报告，以捕捉副作用，并更好地调查针灸在肿瘤学中的风险概况。
根据这项分析，针灸是治疗癌症患者的安全疗法。与假针灸和活性对照相比，针灸似乎是安全的。
