Efficacy and safety of buccal acupuncture for pain management: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to investigate the efficacy and safety of buccal acupuncture (BA) therapy for pain management through meta-analysis and systematic review. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted across eight databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, etc) to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the efficacy of BA in pain management. The search timeframe encompassed records form each database's inception through January 25, 2025. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool was utilized to assess the methodological quality of the included studies. Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 and Stata 15. RESULTS: A total of 40 RCTs involving 3009 patients were included. Compared with the control intervention, BA improved the total effective rate [RR= 1.19, 95 %CI(1.13, 1.24), p < 0.00001], reduced the incidence of adverse reactions [RR= 0.46, 95 %CI(0.37,0.57), p < 0.00001] and showed a better effect on Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) [SMD= -1.51, 95 %CI(-1.98, -1.04), p < 0.00001] scores. The VAS was used to assess pain intensity, where higher values indicate greater pain severity. CONCLUSION: BA demonstrates certain advantages over conventional acupuncture and pharmacotherapy in pain management, with benefits including a lower incidence of adverse reactions and superior pain relief. It may serve as an adjunctive therapy to conventional analgesic treatments in clinical practice. However, further validation through higher-quality, large-sample clinical RCTs is required.