The Domestic Trends of Traditional Korean Medicine Treatments on Frozen Shoulder

동결견의 한의학적 치료에 대한 국내 연구 동향

Objectives : The purpose of this review is to investigate the trends of traditional korean medicine treatments on frozen shoulder. Methods : We investigated the studies on traditional korean medicine treatments for frozen shoulder via searching 6 Korean web databases. As a result, 32 research papers were found to be analyzed according to their published year, the titles of journals, published institution, the types of study, the number of cases, the types of treatments, the instruments for assessment and ethical approvals. Results : 32 papers were published since 1989. The studies on traditional korean medicine treatments about frozen shoulder were mainly published in The journal of korean acupuncture & moxibustion medicine. 10 case series, 7 reviews, 6 non-randomized controlled trials, 5 randomized controlled trials and 4 case reports had been under research. In most of the research, the number of the cases were not enough. In 15 cases of the studies, various traditional korean medicine treatments were used to treat the symptoms. In 8 cases of the studies, one method was used to treat the symptoms. Range of motion(ROM) and visual analogue scale(VAS) were used as primary assessments. Among the 25 clinical studies, 5 of them were accepted by institutional review board(IRB). Conclusion : In this study, we analyzed the trends of traditional korean medicine treatments on frozen shoulder. Reviewing the domestic trends of studies on traditional korean medicine treatments for frozen shoulder and examining the strong and weak points of those treatments are essential for the future studies.