The Effect of Acupuncture on Hand and Wrist Pain Intensity, Functional Status, and Quality of Life in Adults: A Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: This systematic review examined the effects of acupuncture on hand-and-wrist pain intensity, functional status, quality of life, and incidence of adverse effects in adults. Methods: Searches of 6 databases and previous reviews for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were performed. Each outcome was analyzed for participant conditions, interventions, controls, and follow-up times determined a priori. Active controls were excluded. Follow-up periods were based on Cochrane 5.1.0 guidelines. The results were tabulated and described narratively. Results: In the 10 included RCTs (622 participants), 6 had a low risk of bias. For cryotherapy-induced pain, 1 trial showed significant pain reduction post treatment. For rheumatoid arthritis, 1 trial shown significant pain reduction and function improvements post treatment and short-term. For carpal tunnel syndrome, 1 trial showed significant pain reduction and functional improvements intermediate-term, while 3 trials suggested no significant difference. For tenosynovitis, 1 trial showed significant pain reduction and function improvements short-term. For poststroke impairments, 1 trial showed significant function improvements post treatment and at short-term, while another trial suggested no significant difference. No significant improvements were noted for trapezio-metacarpal joint osteoarthritis. In 2 trials, adverse effects occurred in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome; yet acupuncture appeared to be relatively safe. Conclusions: Acupuncture may be effective and safe for short-term pain reduction and functional improvement in hand-and-wrist conditions. Clinicians should interpret the results with caution due to small sample sizes and clinical heterogeneity. Future research is warranted.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".