Acupuncture for lateral elbow pain

Evidence Summaries

Level of Evidence = D

There is insufficient evidence from controlled trials to either support or refute the use of acupuncture in the treatment of lateral elbow pain.

A Cochrane review ¹ included 4 studies with a total of 239 subjects. Due to flaws in study designs, uncertain allocation concealment, and clinical differences between trials, data from trials could not be combined for meta-analysis. One trial found needle acupuncture to result in pain relief for longer than placebo (WMD = 18.8 hours, 95% CI 10.1 to 27.5). A second trial demonstrated an overall participant reported improvement than placebo in the short term (RR 0.09, 95% CI 0.01 0.64). Two trials demonstrated no differences between laser acupuncture and placebo, or acupuncture plus vitamin B12 and vitamin B12 alone. No benefit lasting for more than 24 hours could be demonstrated in the trials.

Comment: The quality of evidence is downgraded by severe study limitations and sparse data.

References

1. Green S, Buchbinder R, Barnsley L, Hall S, White M, Smidt N, Assendelft W. Acupuncture for lateral elbow pain. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2002;(1):CD003527. [PMID:11869671]

Acupuncture for lateral elbow pain is a sample topic from the Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines.

To view other topics, please sign in or purchase a subscription.

Evidence Central is an integrated web and mobile solution that helps clinicians quickly answer etiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis questions using the latest evidence-based research. Learn more.

Citation

"Acupuncture for Lateral Elbow Pain." Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines, Duodecim Medical Publications Limited, 2019. Evidence Central, evidence.unboundmedicine.com/evidence/view/EBMG/453338/all/Acupuncture_for_lateral_elbow_pain.

Acupuncture for lateral elbow pain. Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines. Duodecim Medical Publications Limited; 2019. https://evidence.unboundmedicine.com/evidence/view/EBMG/453338/all/Acupuncture_for_lateral_elbow_pain. Accessed January 19, 2019.

Acupuncture for lateral elbow pain. (2019). In Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines. Available from https://evidence.unboundmedicine.com/evidence/view/EBMG/453338/all/Acupuncture_for_lateral_elbow_pain

Acupuncture for Lateral Elbow Pain [Internet]. In: Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines. Duodecim Medical Publications Limited; 2019. [cited 2019 January 19]. Available from: https://evidence.unboundmedicine.com/evidence/view/EBMG/453338/all/Acupuncture_for_lateral_elbow_pain

* When formatting your citation, note that all book, journal, and database titles should be italicized* Article titles in AMA citation format should be in sentence-case

TY - ELEC T1 - Acupuncture for lateral elbow pain ID - 453338 BT - Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines UR - https://evidence.unboundmedicine.com/evidence/view/EBMG/453338/all/Acupuncture_for_lateral_elbow_pain PB - Duodecim Medical Publications Limited DB - Evidence Central DP - Unbound Medicine ER -