Evaluation of Quality of Literature of Clinical Studies on Acupuncture and Moxibustion Treatment of Hyperthyroidism / 中医杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To evaluate quality of clinical trials about acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of hyperthyrodism in China. Methods:Literature of clinical trials of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of hyperthyroidism were attained by computer and manual retrieval,and randomization,control,selection of study objects,comparability between groups,amount of samples, description and control of source of samples,criteria for diagnosis,application of blind method,criteria for assessment of therapeutic effects,statistical method,adverse effects,follow-up,and others in the literature were analyzed and evaluated by the randomized controlled test criteria and the clinical assessing method in Cochrane handbook of international Cochrane cooperation net.Results:In 63 papers,clinical randomized controlled tests of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of hyperthyroidism only accounted for 22.2%,but with increasing tend year by year in recent years.Conclusion:Though acupuncture and moxibustion have been widely applied in prevention and treatment of hyperthyroidism,it could not provide evidences of higher reliability for clinical treatment due to less clinical randomized controlled tests and lower quality,which severely hinder testing and verifying of clinical therapeutic effects of acupuncture and moxibustion.It is proposed that multiple central and randomized controlled test should be made,so as to search for feasible acupuncture and moxibustion methods with definite therapeutic effect for hyperthyroidism,and provide basis for further systematical evaluation of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of hyperthyroidism.