Meta-analysis of the Clinical Efficacy of Contralateral Needling in Treating Acute-stage Peripheral Facial Paralysis / 上海针灸杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To compare the clinical efficacy between contralateral needling and homolateral (the affected side) needling in treating acute-stage peripheral facial paralysis by using systematic evaluation. Method By computer and manual retrieval, literatures about clinical trials on contralateral needling in treating acute-stage peripheral facial paralysis published before March of 2017 were collected from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WanFang database, Vip database, China Biology Medicine disc (CBMdisc), Pubmed, Web of Science, EMbase and The Cochrane Library. By adopting the Cochrane systematic evaluation, the collected data underwent meta-analysis by using RevMen 5.3 software. Result A total of 276 articles were retrieved and 11 articles were finally recruited, including 761 patients with acute-stage facial paralysis, 394 cases treated by contralateral needling and 367 by homolateral needling. The meta-analysis showed that contralateral needling produced more significant effective rate and recovery rate than homolateral needling [effective rate RR=1.06, 95％CI(1.01,1.11), Z=2.32, P=0.02; recovery rateRR=1.53, 95％CI(1.31,1.78), Z=5.42, P<0.01]. Moreover, contralateral needling produced a better effect in improving facial nerve function, showing an advantage in ameliorating facial movement [HB WMD=0.26, 95％CI(0.04,0.48), Z=2.34, P=0.02; FDIP WMD=3.77, 95％CI(1.53,6.01), Z=3.30, P<0.01]. Conclusion Contralateral needling is worth applying in treating acute-stage peripheral facial paralysis. However, due to the small amount and unsatisfactoryquality of the recruited literatures in this systematic evaluation, multiple-centered randomized trials with high quality and large sample size are expected for further verification.