Abstract
Background: Patients with paroxysmal type of cardiac arrhythmia often experience poor quality of life due to the low successful rate of the mainstream treatments in controlling the disorder. Being one of the complementary health approaches, auriculotherapy was found to be a safe treatment modality which may benefit patients with cardiac arrhythmias. This systematic review therefore evaluates the effectiveness of auriculotherapy on patients with this problem.
Method: Literatures were searched through Pubmed, Embase, CENTRAL, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WangFang Database, and VIP Database using relevant keywords and mesh terms. All articles were screened by title and abstract to identify relevant clinical studies.
Results: A total of 341 relevant articles were identified from 1990 to 2017. Eight clinical trials involving 2050 participants were included Subjects with premature atrial contraction, premature ventricular contraction, sinus arrhythmia and/or sinus tachycardia, were included in most of these trials. The results suggested beneficial effects of auriculotherapy on the reduction of heart rate and/or arrhythmia episodes compared with the controls. However, generalizability of the findings was limited because of significant methodological flaws, such as inadequate information regarding the randomization process, blinding, and allocation concealment.
Conclusion: The findings of the systematic review indicated a plausible effect of auriculotherapy on patients with cardiac arrhythmias. The implications drawn from these studies put some clues for future high-quality trials so as to determine the effectiveness of auriculotherapy on cardiac arrhythmias. A more detailed report of the systematic review and bias assessment of these studies will be presented in the symposium.
Method: Literatures were searched through Pubmed, Embase, CENTRAL, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WangFang Database, and VIP Database using relevant keywords and mesh terms. All articles were screened by title and abstract to identify relevant clinical studies.
Results: A total of 341 relevant articles were identified from 1990 to 2017. Eight clinical trials involving 2050 participants were included Subjects with premature atrial contraction, premature ventricular contraction, sinus arrhythmia and/or sinus tachycardia, were included in most of these trials. The results suggested beneficial effects of auriculotherapy on the reduction of heart rate and/or arrhythmia episodes compared with the controls. However, generalizability of the findings was limited because of significant methodological flaws, such as inadequate information regarding the randomization process, blinding, and allocation concealment.
Conclusion: The findings of the systematic review indicated a plausible effect of auriculotherapy on patients with cardiac arrhythmias. The implications drawn from these studies put some clues for future high-quality trials so as to determine the effectiveness of auriculotherapy on cardiac arrhythmias. A more detailed report of the systematic review and bias assessment of these studies will be presented in the symposium.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 24-25 |
| Number of pages | 2 |
| Journal | Medicines |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 26 Jun 2017 |
| Event | 9th International Symposium on Auriculotherapy - Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Duration: 10 Aug 2017 → 12 Aug 2017 |