A Review of Research on the Treatment of Peroneal Nerve Palsy by Acupuncture and Moxibustion

Background This was a retrospective review of published articles reporting acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of peroneal nerve palsy. Methods On-line database searches were carried out using; Cochrane Library, Pubmed, CNKI, NDSL and OASIS to find articles reporting acupuncture and moxibustion treatment for peroneal nerve palsy. Duplicate articles and studies that were not relevant to the topic were excluded, along with review articles and commentaries. Results 20 studies were selected, 18 clinical case studies (47 patients) and 2 randomized controlled trials (154 patients). Intervention treatments included acupuncture, moxibustion, bee-venom (BV), pharmacopuncture, electroacupuncture and acupotomy. Surprisingly, although peroneal nerve palsy is not a very rare disease, only 2 studies out of 20 carried out a randomized controlled trial. Conclusions Although studies to date report the efficacy of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment in peroneal nerve palsy patients, the absence of objective evaluation and the absence in the reporting of side-effects remains an issue.