Touching-bone acupuncture in the treatment of chronic pain: A protocol for an overview of systematic reviews and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Chronic pain is the most common disease in the world, which lead the patients to suffer the disability both physically and psychologically. The chronic pain can affects the patients to work, socialize, sleep and can lead to depressive illness, decreased motivation, and a reduction in physical activity. Acupuncture is a promising treatment for the chronic pain which has a long history of use in China. This protocol aims to assess the effectiveness and safety of touching periosteum acupuncture therapy on patients with chronic pain. METHODS: Randomized controlled trial literatures which include touching periosteum acupuncture therapy for treating chronic pain will be searched from 8 electronic databases including China Biology Medicine disc, VIP database, WanFang database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Excerpt Medical Database, and Web of Science. The language will be restricted to Chinese and English. The primary outcome is to measure the relief of the pain by Visual Analogue Scale. Two or 3 reviewers will conduct the study selection, data extraction and the evaluation of the risk of bias. RevMan software (V.5.3) will be used to perform the assessment of the risk of bias and data synthesis. RESULTS: From this study, we will confirm the effectiveness of safety of in the treatment of chronic pain. CONCLUSIONS: We will ascertain the effectiveness of safety of touching periosteum acupuncture therapy in the treatment of chronic pain, to provide evidence to guide touching periosteum acupuncture therapy for patients with chronic pain in the future. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval will not be necessary, because the included publications in our study are all from published articles. This systematic review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal or conference report to provide a reference in this field. TRIAL REGISTRATION: CRD42021243387.