Efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapy for nerve deafness: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Background: Acupuncture is one of the important parts of therapeutic methods in traditional Chinese medicine, and has been widely used for the treatment of nerve deafness in recent years. The current study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapy for nerve deafness compared with conventional medicine therapy. Methods: PubMed, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure Database, the Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database, the Chinese Biomedical Database, the Wanfang Database were searched for articles published to identify randomized controlled trials evaluating efficacy and side effects between acupuncture and conventional medicine therapies up to 2013/06. Results: A total of 12 studies, including 527 patients assessed the efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapy for nerve deafness. Overall, the efficacy of acupuncture was significantly better than that of the conventional western medication (RR: 1.54, 95% CI: 1.36-1.74) or traditional Chinese medicines (RR: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.24-1.84), and the efficacy of acupuncture in combination with conventional western medication or traditional Chinese medicine was better than that of the conventional western medication alone (RR: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.29-1.77) or traditional Chinese medicine alone (RR: 1.59, 95% CI: 1.30-1.95). Based on the comparison of number of deafness patients who were completely cured, the efficacy of acupuncture in combination with traditional Chinese medicines was better than that of traditional Chinese medicine alone (RR: 4.62, 95% CI: 1.38-15.47). Conclusions: Acupuncture therapy can significantly improve the hearing of patients with nerve deafness, and the efficacy of acupuncture in combination with medication is superior to medication alone.