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Acupuncture interventions for neck pain compared
Chinese authors have conducted a systematic review and network meta-analysis to compare and rank different types of acupuncture with respect to their effectiveness in treating neck pain. A total of 65 randomised-controlled trials involving 5266 participants and nine types of acupuncture interventions were included. Fire acupuncture, warm acupuncture, acupoint catgut embedding and electro-acupuncture ranked higher than other interventions (usual care, sham acupuncture, no treatment) in reducing pain and disability index scores, and increasing treatment efficacy rates. While manual acupuncture was effective in reducing pain intensity compared to sham acupuncture, it was ranked lower than sham acupuncture for decreasing pain-related disability and was not significantly different in terms of treatment efficacy rate.