Effectiveness of Moxibustion Combined with Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of Spleen and Stomach Deficiency Cold-Type Gastroparesis: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Abstract

Objective. To investigate the effectiveness of moxibustion combined with Chinese medicine in the treatment of spleen and stomach deficiency cold-type gastroparesis by meta-analysis and to provide the clinical basis for its treatment. Methods. A computer search of eight databases was performed for published and unpublished randomized controlled trials on moxibustion for spleen and stomach deficiency cold-type stomach pain from domestic and international clinical trial centers. The study was divided into a combination of a moxibustion and Chinese medicine group and a regular Western medicine group, and the outcome indicators were “effective” and “ineffective.” The relative risk (RR) was used as the effect indicator for the dichotomous data, and the meta-analysis was performed using Reviewer Manager 5.4 and Stata17.0 software. Results. A total of 8 randomized controlled studies with 729 patients were included, and all studies were analyzed for comparability of patients’ baseline information, with no statistically significant differences found ( $P>0.05$ ). The meta-analysis results showed that the pooled effect size RR for the eight studies was 1.24 (95% confidence interval 1.16–1.32), and the statistical significance test was Z = 6.69 ( $P<0.05$ ), indicating that the difference was statistically significant. Conclusion. The meta-analysis concluded that the efficacy of moxibustion combined with Chinese medicine for the treatment of spleen and stomach deficiency cold-type gastroparesis was superior to that of regular Western medicine, but more high-quality studies are needed to confirm this finding.