Insights & Discussion
Acupuncture could be safe and effective for pain reduction, restoring shoulder function, and restoring flexion range of motion for frozen shoulder patients in the short term and midterm.
In this systematic review and a meta-analysis, acupuncture had shown to be a safe treatment with a significant effect in regard to reducing pain, improving shoulder function, and flexion ROM in the short term and midterm. However, due to the small number of included studies and methodological limitations in these studies, more large-scale high-quality RCTs are warranted in order to give a robust conclusion. Future studies should compare acupuncture to other treatments and sham acupuncture. Additionally, longer follow-up time is needed for investigating the effect of acupuncture in the mid- and long term, and the duration of future FS studies follow-up should be increased to one year.
Discover Related Insights
Electroacupuncture may be more effective than manual acupuncture for managing frozen shoulder, with larger effect sizes in terms of pain, function, and response rate.
2022 Frontiers in Medicine Electroacupuncture for the treatment of frozen shoulder: A systematic review and meta-analysis Heo JW, Jo JH, Lee JJ, Kang H, Choi TY, Lee MS, et al.
Systematic Review Electroacupuncture Frozen Shoulder Shoulder Pain
This review included thirteen studies involving 936 patients. The EA group exhibited improvements in FS pain, function, and response rates over the manual acupuncture (MA) group. As an adjunct treatment, EA improved FS pain compared to the control treatments. No adverse effects were reported.
EA was found to be an efficacious method for treating FS in this review. The meta-analysis showed that EA led to a greater reduction of FS pain than MA did, although with a very low certainty of evidence. In comparison to MA, EA led to a superior degree of functional improvement in FS patients, with a very low certainty of evidence. In comparison to MA, EA enhanced the response rate of FS, again with a low certainty of evidence. Compared with WM used in isolation, EA plus WM reduced FS pain with a low certainty of evidence.
Massage combined with acupuncture can better improve the range of motion of joints and daily living ability of patients with frozen shoulder complicated with cervical spondylosis.
2021 American Journal of Translational Research Effects of massage and acupuncture on the range of motion and daily living ability of patients with frozen shoulder complicated with cervical spondylosis Liu M, Liu Y, Peng C, Wang H, Xu Y, Jiao S, et al.
Randomised Controlled Trial Frozen Shoulder Shoulder Pain
A total of 164 patients with frozen shoulder treated in our hospital from June 2016 to April 2019 were recruited and divided into a control group and an observation group. There were 100 cases in the observation group, all of whom were treated with massage combined with acupuncture. Another 64 cases were enrolled in the control group, all of whom were treated with acupuncture alone. The recovery of myodynamia, rating scale of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES), score of American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA), ROM score, vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1), complication rate, total effective rate, and patient satisfaction were assessed.
After treatment, patients in the observation group had better recovery of myodynamia than the control group. They also had lower VAS scores, higher life function score and total ASES scores, higher ASIA scores, higher ROM scores, lower VCAM-1 and ICAM-1 expression, lower complication rate, higher total effective rate, and higher patient satisfaction.
Acupuncture therapy seems effective for motor function, pain relief and activities of daily living in stroke patients with mild Shoulder-Hand Syndrome, when it is used in combination with rehabilitation.
2019 Frontiers in Neurology Acupuncture for Post-stroke Shoulder-Hand Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Liu S, Zhang CS, Cai Y, Guo X, Zhang AL, Xue CC, et al.
Systematic Review Acupuncture Shoulder Pain
This systematic review shows that adding acupuncture to routine rehabilitation can improve clinical outcomes (pain and motor function) for people with mild post-stroke SHS. However, the evidence was assessed as “low” by GRADE due to the methodological limitations and heterogeneity of included studies, which made our certainty in recommending acupuncture for this condition in clinical practice as “low.” Well-designed placebo-controlled RCTs with a long treatment duration and follow up, as well as standardized reporting, are needed to support acupuncture's safe and effective use in the management of post-stroke SHS.