A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials on Chuna Manual Therapy for Cervicogenic Headache

Objectives: We conducted this study to evaluate the efficacy of Chuna Manual Therapy (CMT) for treatment of cervicogenic headache (CeH) through systematic review and Meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as a preceding research to further research the effective of Chuna Manual Therapy for patients who suffered from CeH. Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. We searched the studies from MEDLINE, Elsevier-EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, CAJD, KISS, KMBase, Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal, NDSL, and OASIS. The studies selected only in randomized controlled trials. We selected the chosen studies by the selection and the exclusion criteria, and evaluated the quality of the selected studies using the Jadad score and the Cochran ROB tool. We used the Visual Analogue Scale score (VAS) and Clinical total Effective Rate (CER) for the results and analyzed the results of the included studies using RevMan 5.3 software provided by the Cochran library. Results: We included 20 RCTs, including 1,673 subjects, in the systematic review and meta-analysis. After the intervention, the CMT group showed better results than the pharmacotherapy group, the physiotherapy group, and the combined treatment group. The CMT group showed a good effect on the CER and the VAS but showed a significant heterogeneity compared to the pharmacotherapy group. Conclusions: The CMT as monotherapy might have benefits on Cervicogenic Headache patient. Further well-designed studies need to be conducted.