A Systematic Review of Acupuncture for Tennis Elbow

Abstract

This review analyzed randomized controlled trials and case reports to identify the effectiveness, and level of evidence showing that acupuncture treatment aids the recovery of patients with tennis elbow. A literature search was performed between 1st to 10th September, 2019 which used PubMed, the Cochrane library, the Korean databases Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System, Korean Studies Information Service System to retrieve Korean and international studies. Amongst the 243 articles retrieved there were 9 randomized controlled trials and 18 case reports. The level of evidence for the recovery of patients with tennis elbow, for efficacy and safety of acupuncture was low. It was observed that the studies had a high risk of bias, missing acupuncture details, multiple combinations of treatments rather than a single treatment, insufficient indicators of assessment, and lacked robustness. Compliance with international standards such as using consolidated standards of reporting trials, will improve the quality of evidence.

Keywords

• acupuncture
• lateral epicondylitis
• systematic review
• tennis elbow