Efficacy and safety of acupuncture for urinary retention: A protocol for systematic review and meta analysis

Many postoperative patients and males suffer urinary retention (UR) symptom, which directly affects their quality of life. Acupuncture is widely used by Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors to treat various postoperative urinary retention and elderly male urinary retention patients. However, acupuncture treatment of urinary retention symptoms lacks relevant multi-center clinical studies and lacks a more comprehensive meta-analysis report, which contradicts clinical practice. To confirm the safety and efficacy of acupuncture treatment of urinary retention caused by various reasons requires more comprehensive and strong evidence-based medical evidence. Databases including CNKI, PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Scopus, EBSCO were retrieved for relevant literature, with the retrieval deadline being June 23, 2020. The 2 conducted independent reading of the retrieved literature and removed the duplications, and then used the Cochrane Handbook to score the randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Only when the score is greater than 5 points can they be included. Then extract the basic information of the included literature, post-voided residual urine (PVR), maximal cystometric capacity (MCC), maximal flow rate (MFR), bladder compliance (BC), adverse events (AE), and effective rate data, and make a literature feature table. The methodological quality was evaluated with the "Risk of Bias" tool, and the meta-analysis was performed by using the RevMan 5.3.5 software. Use Stata 15 for regression analysis to find the source of heterogeneity, and try to resolve it using subgroup analysis. The analysis of PVR, MCC, MFR, BC, AE and effective rate data can provide high-quality evidence for high-quality synthesis and/or descriptive analysis of the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture treatment of various causes of urinary retention. This study can provide more comprehensive evidence to prove whether acupuncture is effective and safe for patients with UR. The research has been registered and approved on the PROSPERO website. The registration number is CRD42019119238.