2025/09/10 by Sixuan Wang, Bo Li, Luo Mei +6 · 1 voice
Medicine · Neuroscience · #Acupuncture Treatment Research Studies #Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies #Pain Management and Placebo Effect
paper · doi:10.1016/j.eujim.2025.102553
openalex publication_date 2025/09/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/02/22
• Evaluated acupuncture pain guidelines using the AGREE II assessment tool. • Found low scores in Applicability and Editorial Independence across guidelines. • Filiform needling is widely recommended for pain at all disease stages. • Urges improved methods for stakeholder input and patient-centered design. This study aimed to assess the methodological quality of clinical practice guidelines for acupuncture in pain management, with the goals of identifying areas requiring improvement and providing insights for the development of high-quality guidelines in the future. Two researchers conducted an independent literature review and screening. The included guidelines were evaluated using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE II) Instrument. The literature search was performed across the following databases and websites: China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the New Zealand Ministry of Health website, SinoMed, and other relevant platforms. Six domains were assessed: Scope and Purpose, Stakeholder Involvement, Rigour of Development, Clarity of Presentation, Applicability, and Editorial Independence. SPSS 23.0 was employed to assess inter-rater reliability, calculate domain scores, and analyze the mean standardized percentage and standard deviation for each domain. A total of 19 guidelines were incorporated into the analysis, with an inter-rater reliability coefficient exceeding 0.75. These guidelines originated from China ( n = 16, 84.2 %), South Korea ( n = 2, 10.5 %), and the United Kingdom ( n = 1, 5.3 %). Based on the AGREE II scores, five guidelines were rated as high-quality, 12 as average-quality, and two as low-quality. The scores for each domain were as follows: Scope and Purpose (76.46 % ± 4.07 %), Stakeholder Involvement (61.99 % ± 13.95 %), Rigour of Development (61.13 % ± 14.28 %), Clarity of Presentation (76.17 % ± 7.71 %), Applicability (31.36 % ± 11.88 %), and Editorial Independence (46.05 % ± 35.26 %). The existing clinical practice guidelines for acupuncture in pain management remain limited in quantity and generally lack methodological rigour. Notably, significant deficiencies were observed in the domain of Applicability, indicating an urgent need for improvement in this area.