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Rheumatology 2002; 41: 1224-1231
© 2002 British Society for Rheumatology

Review

Reviews of acupuncture for chronic neck pain: pitfalls in conducting systematic reviews

P. White1, G. Lewith1,2, B. Berman3 and S. Birch4

1 University of Southampton, Royal South Hants Hospital, Southampton,
2 University of Southampton, Southampton, UK,
3 University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA and
4 Stichting (Foundation) for the Study of Traditional East Asian Medicine, W.G. Plein 330, 1054 SG Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This paper examines some of the problems specifically associated with conducting research into acupuncture and how this can lead to further problems with subsequent systematic reviews. Studies for the treatment of chronic neck pain have been used as examples of how presented information can be misleading to an acupuncture-naive reader and how researchers must be sensitive to these problems when compiling their inclusion and exclusion criteria. The problems associated with scoring trials are discussed and further work to increase the scope of scoring mechanisms is recommended in order to produce meaningful systematic reviews in the future.

KEY WORDS: Acupuncture, Neck pain, Systematic review.

Correspondence to: P. White, School of Medicine, Complementary Medicine Research Unit, Community Clinical Sciences, Mailpoint OPH, Royal South Hants Hospital, Brintons Terrace, Southampton SO14 0YG, UK.


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