Manual Acupuncture or Combination of Rehabilitation Therapy to Treat Poststroke Dysphagia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Backgroundand Objective. Poststroke dysphagia is one of the most common stroke complications with high morbidity and long course, while acupuncture treatment is easily accepted by patients due to its reliability, feasibility, simple operation, low price, and quick effect. Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy of manual acupuncture in poststroke dysphagia patients. Methods. Databases including Medline, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane Library databases, EMBASE, CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), WanFang (WanFang Database), and VIP (Chongqing VIP) were searched from inception until Aug 19, 2022. Data were analyzed using Revman 5.3, Stata 14.0, and TSA 0.9.5.10 Beta software. Evidence quality evaluation was performed by using GRADE profiler 3.6. Results. A total of 33 randomized control trials (RCTs) enrolled 2680 patients. Meta-analysis results revealed that compared to rehabilitation, acupuncture decreased water swallow test (WST) and standard swallowing assessment (SSA) scores. Meanwhile, in contrast to rehabilitation alone, integration of acupuncture with rehabilitation effectively decreased WST and SSA scores; improved swallowing scores of videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS), swallowing scores of Fujishima Ichiro, Barthel index (BI), and swallowing quality of life questionnaire (SWAL-QOL); reduced the aspiration rates as well as aspiration pneumonia; and shortened the duration of empty swallowing and the duration of 5 mL water swallowing. Pooled analysis did not reveal any significant differences in dysphagia outcome severity scores (DOSS) (p=0.15 > 0.05p) between the acupuncture group combined with rehabilitation group and the rehabilitation group alone. After the risk-of-bias assessment, these studies were not of low quality, except in terms of allocation concealment and blindness. Evidence quality evaluation showed that allocation concealment and blindness led to a downgrade and primary outcomes' evaluation of acupuncture combined with rehabilitation were ranked as moderate-quality evidence while acupuncture alone was ranked as low-quality. Conclusion. This meta-analysis provided positive pieces of evidences that acupuncture and acupuncture combined with rehabilitation were better than using rehabilitation alone in the treatment of poststroke dysphagia.