Comparison of Tongue Acupuncture and Traditional Acupuncture in the Treatment of Poststroke Dysarthria: A Meta-Analysis and Tongue Acupuncture System Classification Evaluation

Objective. To discuss whether tongue acupuncture is more effective than traditional acupuncture in the treatment of poststroke dysarthria and explore the advantage of tongue acupuncture treatment parameters. Methods. We evaluated the efficacy of tongue acupuncture compared with traditional acupuncture through a rigorous meta-analysis process. The included studies were from eight databases in English and Chinese. The Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool was used to evaluate the quality of studies. Stata15.1 software was used for meta-analysis and sensitivity analysis. Tongue acupuncture therapeutic parameters were classified and counted based on tongue acupoint location, acupuncture manipulation, and the number of manipulations. Subgroup analysis was used to compare the differences between various treatment parameters. Outcome The meta-analysis eventually included a total of 9 studies. Tongue acupuncture is superior to traditional acupuncture in clinical efficacy [OR = 3.62, 95%Cl (2.24, 5.85), P