Completeness of reporting acupuncture interventions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Review of adherence to the STRICTA statement [version 3; peer review: 2 approved]

Abstract

Background: The completeness of reporting of acupuncture interventions is critical to ensure the applicability and reproducibility of acupuncture clinical trials. In the past, different publications have evaluated the completeness of reporting of acupuncture interventions for different clinical situations, such as knee osteoarthritis, neurological diseases or cancer. However, this has not been done for acupuncture trials for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Objective: To assess the completeness of reporting of acupuncture interventions in trials for COPD. Methods: A total of 11 English and Chinese databases were screened up until May 2019 for randomised or quasi-randomised control trials of acupuncture for COPD. The STRICTA checklist was used to determine the quality of the reporting of acupuncture interventions. Results: A total of 28 trials were included in our review. Out of the 16 STRICTA checklist subitems analysed, only 4 were considered appropriately reported in more than 70% of the trials, while 7 were correctly reported in less than 30%. Conclusion: The adherence to STRICTA guidelines of acupuncture trials for COPD is suboptimal, and future efforts need to be addressed to improve the completeness of reporting.