Effect of Different Modalities of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Post-stroke Upper Limb Motor Dysfunction: a Network Meta-analysis

Background Upper limb motor dysfunction is a common complication after stroke that seriously affects daily living skills of patients. As a common neuroelectrohysiological technique, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has a good effect on post-stroke upper limb motor dysfunction. However, there is still no practice-based evidence on the selection of modalities of rTMS. Objective To evaluate the clinical efficacy of four rTMS modalities in post-stroke upper limb motor dysfunction by a network meta-analysis. Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about rTMS for treating upper limb motor dysfunction after stroke were searched with subject words combined with free words as searching terms in PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CBM, CNKI, Wanfang Data, and VIP from inception to February 2022, supplemented by references from retrospective meta-analysis. Two researchers performed literature screening, data extraction, and quality evaluation separately. RevMan 5.0 and Stata 16.0 wer