Dados do Resumo

Título

EFFECTS OF ACUPUNCTURE ON PAIN MANAGEMENT IN WOMEN WITH BREAST CANCER: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Introdução

Studies show that 47.2% of women with breast cancer have some kind of pain and 11.2% of those who have undergone surgery have persistent pain even three months after the procedure. In addition, it has been observed that 20% to 40% of women taking aromatase inhibitors have arthralgia. In the context of integrative and complementary practices offered during and after breast cancer treatment, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) mentions that acupuncture can be offered for the treatment of pain, with a recommendation grade of C, which indicates benefit for selected patients.

Objetivo

This study aimed to analyze the evidence on the effects of systemic and/or auricular acupuncture on pain management in women with breast cancer. 

Métodos

Systematic review according to PRISMA recommendations, carried out on the following databases: CINAHL, COCHRANE, LILACS, MTCI, PubMed, SCOPUS, Web of Science, published between 2010 and August 2022. The GRADE system was used to classify the articles and the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias Tool was used to analyze the risk of bias. The searches were carried out in August 2022 independently by two authors, and any disagreements found in the extracted data were assessed by a third author. The protocol was registered in the Prospective Register of Ongoing Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) under number CRD42022328279.

Resultados

The search retrieved 493 articles, in the end 4 studies were included in the review.
The objectives of the studies ranged from assessing pain and other symptoms in the post-operative context to assessing pain and musculoskeletal symptoms in women taking aromatase inhibitors.
With regard to methodological quality, 02 articles had high methodological quality, 01 had moderate quality and 01 had low methodological quality.
In the analysis of risk of bias, only one study presented risk of bias in terms of randomization, two studies presented risk of bias when it came to missing results, and one study was classified as uncertain risk of bias in other sources.  
With regard to pain reduction, 3 studies showed statistical differences (p=0.001) in pain reduction between the groups that underwent real acupuncture and simulated acupuncture, and only 1 study showed no differences in pain reduction.

Conclusões

The studies in this review showed a potential benefit in the use of acupuncture for pain relief in women with breast cancer in clinical and surgical scenarios, even in the presence of heterogeneous interventions.
However, in some scenarios, such as the maintenance of the effect after intervention, pre-established treatment protocols and simulated acupuncture modalities in the comparison groups, no significant results were found.

Palavras Chave

Breast cancer; Pain; Acupuncture