The Efficacy of Acupuncture on Shoulder for Pain Intensity, Functional Status, and General Quality of Life in Adults: A Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: To assess the effect of acupuncture as a standalone treatment on shoulder pain intensity, functional status, quality of life, and incidence of adverse events in adults. Methods: . RCTs with active controls or post-stroke shoulder dysfunction were excluded. Follow-up periods were as per the 2024 Cochrane guidelines. The included trials' results were tabulated and described narratively. Results: From the ten included studies (748 participants), three had a low risk of bias. For nonspecific general shoulder pain, one trial highlighted a reduction in short-term pain, and another trial showed improvements in both short-term pain and functional status. Two trials showed no significant improvement in pain, and another trial indicated no significant improvement in pain nor function. Two trials highlighted mixed results, with both active and control interventions improving pain and functional status. For shoulder impingement syndrome, two trials suggested no improvement in pain, function, nor quality of life. For adhesive capsulitis, although one trial indicated a significant reduction in long-term pain, another indicated no improvement. Five trials reported the incidence of adverse effects. Conclusion: Limited evidence suggests acupuncture as a standalone treatment to be effective and safe for improving shoulder pain and function. Clinicians should exercise caution when interpreting the results of this review due to the limited sample sizes and low-quality evidence. Further research is warranted.
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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 | 0.006 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| 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".