THE EFFECT OF ACUPUNCTURE IN THE TREATMENT OF LATERAL EPICONDYLITIS IN ADULTS: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW
Description
Lateral epicondylitis is a disease characterized by pain in the elbow caused by excessive repetitive movements that affect the extensor carpi radialis brevis tendon. Following this, the treatment currently recommended is the use of anti-inflammatories and injection of corticosteroids, which demonstrates a long-term risk to the patient. And in this scenario, acupuncture emerged as a proposal to reduce these risks and treat pain. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of acupuncture in the treatment of lateral epicondylitis in adults. This study is an integrative review, which, based on a guiding question, searched the main databases, BVSalud and Pubmed, where it incorporated its searches into the Rayan platform1. From which, two masked researchers analyzed these articles and then after removing the masking and resolving the conflicts, the extraction protocol was used to read the articles in full and thus the present review was developed. The result of this review demonstrates that acupuncture, when compared to conventional treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroid injections and placebo, demonstrated better efficacy rates compared to isolated treatment. Similarly, acupuncture has demonstrated safety in all articles for the treatment of lateral epicondylitis. In short, unanimously, all articles agree that acupuncture demonstrates clear effectiveness in the treatment of lateral epicondylitis. However, some authors recommend that to ensure this citation, more well-designed studies need to be developed.