Acupuncture and related therapies for stable angina pectoris: A protocol for network meta-analysis.

Background: Stable angina pectoris (SAP) is one of the important causes and harbingers of disability and mortality worldwide in the cardiovascular diseases. Acupuncture has been widely applied in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular diseases in recent years. This systematic review protocol aims to analyze different acupuncture and related therapies to treat SAP, with a view to providing an evidence-based basis for clinical implementation of treatment for patients with SAP.

Methods And Analysis: The electronic databases of PubMed, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang database, Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database (VIP), and China Biology Medicine Database (CBM) will be searched from inception to November 2020. The outcome measures were angina attack frequency, ECG changes, angina pain intensity, performance on the Six-Minute Walk Test (6-MWT) and reported adverse events. Study inclusion, data extraction and quality assessment will be performed independently by 2 reviewers. STATA 14.0 will be used to perform pairwise meta-analysis. STATA 13.0 and WinBUGS 1.4.3 will be used to perform pairwise meta-analysis and will be used to conduct network meta-analyses.

Results: The results of this review will generate a comprehensive review of current evidence and be published on a peer-reviewed journal.

Conclusions: The result of this network meta-analysis is expected to provide a possible ranking for acupuncture treatment methods of stable angina pectoris and offer better options for patients with stable angina pectoris.

Ethics And Dissemination: Ethical approval is not necessary since this protocol is only for systematic review and does not involve privacy data or conduct an animal experiment. This protocol will be disseminated by a peer-review journal or conference presentation.

Trial Registration Number: INPLASY2020110035.