Acupuncture-point stimulation for chemotherapy-induced nausea or vomiting

Effectiveness of acupuncture and related therapies for palliative care of cancer: overview of systematic reviews

“…The remaining three SRs focused only on one particular form of acupuncture or related therapy, including TENS 13 , moxibustion 31 and acupoint injection 32 . Sixteen SRs summarised the evidence on a single outcome, including CRP 8,13,21,22,26,27 , fatigue 9,24,31 , hot flashes 17,18 , chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) 14,20 , hiccups 29 and irradiation-induced xerostomia 19 . The remaining seven SRs 6,7,12,20,28,30,32 reported evidence on a wide range of outcomes in the palliative care of patients with cancer.…”

“…In contrast, one SR 28 investigated the long-term effects of acupuncture (3 to 21 months of follow-up) and concluded that its benefits could be sustained for at least 3 months in women with breast cancer and in men with prostate cancer (Table 5 and Appendix 4). 6,7,14,20,30,32 synthesised evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture and related therapies on CINV (Tables 5-7 and Appendix 4). Four 14,20,30,32 SRs conducted meta-analyses.…”

“…6,7,14,20,30,32 synthesised evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture and related therapies on CINV (Tables 5-7 and Appendix 4). Four 14,20,30,32 SRs conducted meta-analyses. Two 20,32 reported that the results of acupuncture and related therapies for CINV were better than those of the control group (no details on the control intervention were provided).…”

“…Of the 23 SRs, six 7,8,20,21,24,25 did not describe any information on adverse events, two 23,29 reported that the included studies did not mention any adverse events and two 22,30 mentioned that all of the included studies reported no adverse events. The remaining 13 SRs 6,9,[12][13][14][17][18][19][26][27][28]31,32 reported adverse events that were attributable to acupuncture and related therapies. A wide range of minor adverse events was reported, which including bleeding at Considerable heterogeneity (I 2 > = 67%) was observed in all three meta-analyses.…”

“…An overview of the existing SRs is needed to provide an update on all synthesised clinical evidence on acupuncture and related therapies for palliative cancer care 10 . Although such an overview 11 has already been conducted, its trustworthiness is limited for the following reasons: first, the search dates were limited to 2000 to 2011; hence, SRs published outside this time frame, including those published or updated since 8,9,[12][13][14] , were not included. Second, the search strategy of the previous overview did not include Chinese-language databases, which may have led to the omission of clinical evidence 15 .…”