ACUPUNCTURE ON THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF PATIENTS WITH NON SPECIFIC LOW BACK PAIN. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

S. Sotiropoulos^1,2, C. Chronis^1,2, S. Mpirintzi¹, C. Skordis^1,2, G. Georgoudis^1,2

¹University of West Attica, Physiotherapy, Athens, Greece, ²Hellenic Physiotherapy Society of Algology, Athens, Greece

Background: More than 50% of the adult population will experience at least one episode of low back pain in their lifetime. This makes low back pain the most common musculoskeletal painful pathology and one of the costliest conditions that health care systems have to cope with. In more than 85% of the cases no specific causative factor can be definitely identified and therefore the term non specific low back pain is commonly used to describe pain in the back. Non-specific low back pain can be a major cause of disability and is significantly affecting the quality of people’s life suffering from it. Several treatments is used to treat this disease. Acupuncture is one of the treatments chosen by clinicians. Research has been increasing exponentially from the early 1970s until the present day on the field of acupuncture. However, the majority of research focuses on pain reduction and not on the quality of life of patients.

Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review is to investigate the effect of different forms of acupuncture on the quality of life of patients suffering from non specific low back pain.

Methods: This systematic review was formulated based on and adhering to the PRISMA checklist. A search was performed on four databases (PubMed, Pedro, Scopus και ScienceDirect) from inception until December of 2021. Articles that were written exclusively in English were selected. Only Randomized Control Trials (RCT’s) were selected in which acupuncture was applied to adults with non-specific low back pain and its effect on quality of life was evaluated. Two reviewers independently screened the studies for selection and disagreements were resolved through discussion or the input of a third reviewer.

Results: A total of 1555 studies were initially selected and imported to the Rayyan software for review. After removal of the duplicates and studies not meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 24 studies with 15882 participants were Included in this review. The interventions used in these studies included body acupuncture, electro-acupuncture, ear-acupuncture and other. Risk of bias assessment was performed with the Downs and Black checklist. One study scored ËXCELLENT", 17 studies scored "GOOD" and six studies scored "FAIR". Results showed that 8 interventions statistically improved patients’ quality of life while in 16 interventions improvement wasn’t statistically significant eventhough in the majority of the studies quality of life was improved. No study mentioned whether their result indicated a minimum clinical important difference. A meta-analysis could not be performed due to inadequate homogenity of the interventions used and measureents.

Conclusions: This review provides evidence that acupuncture may be improving the quality of life of patients suffering from non specific low back pain. Body acupuncture and the other needling techniques, help to improve the quality of life of people with non-specific back pain and clinician may consider acupuncture as a treatment technique.

Implications: The findings of this study suggest that acupuncture may be beneficial for improving quality of life in patients with non specific low back pain However, higher quality trials are needed to investigate specific parameters and subpopulations.

Funding acknowledgements: N/A

Keywords:
Acupuncture
Quality of Life
Non specific Low Back Pain

Topics:
Pain & pain management
Musculoskeletal
Musculoskeletal: spine

Did this work require ethics approval? No

Reason: This study is a systematic review of the existing literature