ArticleMedicine2020
Efficacy and safety of fire needle vs conventional acupuncture in the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia: A protocol for systematic review and meta analysis.
Article in Medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 2 citations in OpenAlex.
- Visual analysis of research hotspots and trends of external therapies in traditional Chinese medicine for chronic pain.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Clinical effect of acupuncture along fascia, meridians, and nerves combined with ultrasound-guided paravertebral nerve block in the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia: a randomized parallel-controlled study.Journal of traditional Chinese medicine = Chung i tsa chih ying wen pan · 2023Trial
- Acupuncture-Based Interventions for Sleep Outcomes in Patients with Postherpetic Neuralgia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of pain research · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundFire needle therapy has the double function of acupuncture and moxibustion, which has both the stimulation of needle and the warm stimulation of moxibustion. As an important part of acupuncture and moxibustion, fire needle has been widely used in clinical treatment since ancient times in China. Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is a kind of chronic and solid neuropathic pain with persistent and intense pain after the skin lesion of sores has been completely eliminated. The clinical treatment of PHN is mostly integrated therapy. In recent years, many literatures have reported that the curative effect of fire needle on PHN is accurate. The purpose of this protocol is to describe how to accumulate evidence for further understanding of the status quo and reliability of clinical practice in the treatment of PHN with fire needle.
methodsSeven electronic databases were used to retrieve the literature for the PHN randomized controlled trials, including 3 English databases (PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials [Cochrane Library]) and 4 Chinesedatabases (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese VIP Information, Wanfang Database, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database). This systematic review will include all randomized controlled clinical trials using fireneedle therapy for PHN. Pain intensity, safety and cost, quality of life, global perceptionare outcomes. The selection of the study will be completed independently by 2 reviewers, extract the data, and evaluate the quality of the study before selecting the title, abstract, and full text. Revman 5.4 software will be used to perform meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials, where risk ratios for dichotomous data and standardized or weighted mean differences for continuous data are the results.
resultConclusion:This proposed systematic review will provide up-to-date evidence to assess the effect of fire needle for patients with PHN. REGISTRATION: INPLASY202080029.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.