A systematic review of Tuina for irritable bowel syndrome: Recommendations for future trials

Fan-Long Bu, Mei Han, Chun-Li Lu, Xue-Han Liu, Wei-Guang Wang, Jing-Ling Lai, Xing-Hua Qiu, Bai-Xiang He, Han Zhang, Nicola Robinson, Yu-Tong Fei, Jian-Ping Liu · Complementary Therapies in Medicine · 2020 August

DOI 10.1016/j.ctim.2020.102504

Objective

This systematic review assessed whether Tuina (therapeutic massage) is more effective and safer than no treatment or routine medical treatment for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Conclusions

Tuina combined with RTs may be superior to RTs for improving overall symptom of IBS-diarrhea. Due to the existing methodological issues and the heterogeneity of Tuina manipulation, current findings need to be confirmed in large scale, multicenter, and robust randomized trials (especially on outcome assessing blinding and allocation concealment).

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