Acupuncture plus Rehabilitation for Unilateral Neglect after Stroke: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objectives. To systematically assess the efficacy of acupuncture combined with rehabilitation on unilateral neglect after stroke. Methods. The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Excerpt Medical Database (EMBASE), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), and Wan Fang databases were searched online for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture and its effects on unilateral neglect after stroke from their inception to September 2019. RCTs on acupuncture combined with rehabilitation in the experimental group for unilateral neglect compared with rehabilitation alone or rehabilitation plus sham acupuncture in the control group were included. Two authors separately screened the literature, extracted the data, and evaluated the quality of the included studies. Review Manager 5.3 software was used for the data analysis. Results. A total of 542 patients from nine RCTs were included. The meta-analysis showed that the experimental groups could significantly improve Fugl–Meyer Assessment (FMA) (MD = 11.54, 95% CI [9.54, 13.54], P