Non-specific low back pain is a significant global health problem, with 90~95% of patients suffering from non-specific low back pain (NSLBP). Clinical practice has shown that acupuncture and moxibustion therapy have positive efficacy with fewer side effects, making it a more efficient treatment option.
To boost efforts in the field, a team of researchers in China established a set of guidelines to provide more comprehensive scientific, patient-centered clinical practice recommendations.
"Referencing the WHO guideline development process, clinical questions were initially investigated and collected from the perspectives of guideline users in different identities and regions,” shares leader of the guideline working group, Tao Yang, a professor of acupuncture at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. “Combined with multidisciplinary expert interviews and the use of a modified Delphi method, we formed a structured clinical question that reached expert consensus.”
Subsequently, evidence was gathered to construct the set of guidelines. Participants in the survey for the clinical questions and members of the guidelines development expert panel come from different countries and regions, making this set of guidelines more internationally representative and its clinical applicability more extensive.
The set of guidelines, published in the World Journal of Acupuncture – Moxibustion , provides seven recommendations for 10 clinical questions. The main recommendations are:
The clinical questions in the set of guidelines were formulated in the form of questionnaires, and the quality of the evidence from the included studies was found to be low.
“Notably, there was a lack of high-quality literature references. Therefore, higher quality clinical studies should be conducted on these clinical questions to provide more evidence-based references for subsequent clinical work,” adds Yang.
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Contact author: Tao YANG, Guang'anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing100053, China , bjytyangtao@163.com
World Journal of Acupuncture - Moxibustion
Literature review
Not applicable
World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies Clinical Practice Guideline on Acupuncture-Moxibustion: Non-Specific Low Back Pain recommendation summaries
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported here.