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Complex traditional Chinese medicine for poststroke motor dysfunction. A systematic review
Stroke, 07/01/09

Junhua Z et al. – A review finds scant data available to evaluate efficacy of complex Traditional Chinese Medicine (cTCM) for poststroke motor dysfunction. Most of primary studies available for were inadequately designed trials characterized by unknown dropout rates and definitional vagueness in outcomes measures. None of the studies approached important endpoints (eg, death, survival times, dependency rate, reduction in length of hospital stay).

• Systematic review of whether cTCM improves poststroke motor recovery
• cTCM defined as intervention including at least acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine
• Extensive search of PubMed, EMBASE, CBM, and Cochrane Library up to December 2007
• Search for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) about cTCM for motor dysfunction of poststroke irrespective of language
• Assessment of the quality of each trial by Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook 4.2.6

• After selection of 11,234 articles, inclusion of 34 RCTs and quasi-RCTs
• All trials conducted in China; published on Chinese journals
• All trials but 1 reported results in favor of cTCM treatments suggesting a strong publication bias
• Based on significant clinical and methodological heterogeneity, no meta-analysis performed; thus no cumulative result for pooling data of RCTs

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