Klinik für Innere Medizin II, Hämatologie und Internistische Onkologie, Universitätsklinikum Jena, Jena, Germany.
Klinik für Innere Medizin II, Hämatologie und Internistische Onkologie, Universitätsklinikum Jena, Jena, Germany;
In Vivo. 2022 Nov-Dec;36(6):2579-2597. doi: 10.21873/invivo.12993.
BACKGROUND/AIM: With a rapidly growing number of studies, systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) on acupuncture, the level of evidence seems to be high. Yet, traditional Chinese acupuncture is built on concepts which are not in accordance with science-based medicine. Accordingly, our aim was to critically assess the evidence presented in SRs and MAs on xerostomia induced by treatment of head and neck cancer with radiotherapy.
In February 2022, a systematic search of five electronic databases (Embase, Cochrane, PsychInfo, CINAHL and Medline) was conducted to find SRs/MAs on acupuncture use against cancer-treatment induced xerostomia. We evaluated all SRs/MAs using the AMSTAR instrument, comparing the assessment of the individual studies included and the conclusions drawn by the authors. In case of heterogeneity between the SRs, we evaluated the controversial items of the assessments directly from the studies.
Finally, eight SRs/MAs were included. Most of them show methodological drawbacks in several domains of the AMSTAR instrument, which influences the credibility of the results.
The evidence on the use of acupuncture as treatment for radiotherapy-induced xerostomia is low. Present SRs/MAs mainly summarize results of a few and mostly small studies. Even though the included studies greatly overlap, the quality of the presentation and interpretation of the authors differs greatly. Therefore, a high quality and conclusive summary of the present evidence on the use of acupuncture to treat radiotherapy induced xerostomia is still missing.
背景/目的：随着越来越多的关于针灸的研究、系统评价（SRs）和荟萃分析（MAs）的出现，证据水平似乎很高。然而，传统的中医针灸是基于与基于科学的医学不符的概念。因此，我们的目的是批判性地评估关于放疗治疗头颈部癌症引起的口干症的 SRs 和 MAs 中提出的证据。
2022 年 2 月，我们对五个电子数据库（Embase、Cochrane、PsychInfo、CINAHL 和 Medline）进行了系统搜索，以查找关于针灸治疗癌症治疗引起的口干症的使用的 SRs/MAs。我们使用 AMSTAR 工具评估所有的 SRs/MAs，比较纳入研究的评估和作者得出的结论。如果 SRs 之间存在异质性，我们会直接从研究中评估评估的有争议项目。
最终纳入了八项 SRs/MAs。它们中的大多数在 AMSTAR 工具的几个领域都存在方法学上的缺陷，这影响了结果的可信度。
关于针灸作为放疗引起的口干症的治疗方法的证据水平较低。目前的 SRs/MAs 主要总结了少数且大多是小研究的结果。即使纳入的研究有很大的重叠，但作者对研究结果的呈现和解释的质量差异很大。因此，目前关于针灸治疗放疗引起的口干症的证据仍然缺乏高质量和结论性的总结。
