The Effects of Acupuncture on Cerebral and Muscular Microcirculation: A Systematic Review of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Studies

Table 1

Adherence to STRICTA. Articles organized by category according to a checklist provided by STRICTA.

Item	Detail	Provided
		Yes	Unclear or incomplete	No or not applicable
(1) Acupuncture rationale	(1a) Style of acupuncture	16
	(1b) Reasoning for treatment	11		5 [27–31]
	(1c) Extent to which treatment was varied	16
(2) Details of needling	(2a) Number of needle insertions	9	7 [30–36]
	(2b) Points used (uni/bilateral)	16; u/b: 9	u/b: 3 [29–31]	u/b: 4 [32–34, 36]
	(2c) Depth of insertion	9	1 [32]	6 [28–31, 34, 37]
	(2d) Response sought	9		7: [27, 29, 31, 32, 37–39]
	(2e) Needle stimulation	14		2 [33, 34]
	(2f) Needle retention time	14	2 [30, 31]
	(2g-1) Needle (dimensions)	13		3 [29, 32, 39]
	(2g-2) Type (material/mfc)	12	3 [35, 36, 40]	1 [39]
(3) Treatment regimen	(3a) Number of sessions	13	3 [27, 30, 31]
	(3b-1) Frequency or time between treatments	6 [27, 28, 34–36, 38]	2 [30, 32]	8
	(3b-2) Duration of treatment sessions	14	2 [30, 31]
(4) Other components of treatment	(4a) Details of other interventions for the acupuncture group	2 [33, 34]		14
	(4b) Setting and context of treatment	16: N = 15 [27–35, 37–42]; T = 4 [32–34, 38]; P = 2 [33, 34]; O = 3: eeg [33], lds [42], icg [36]
(5) Practitioner background	(5) Description of participating acupuncturists	2 [35, 36]	3 [32, 38, 39]	11
(6) Control or comparator interventions	(6a) Rationale for the control or comparator	2 [35, 42]	7 [27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 38, 40]	7 [29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41]
	(6b) Precise description of the control or comparator	8	2 [30, 33]	6 [31, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41]

(2b) u/b: uni/bilateral.
(2d) Acupressure [39], laser acupuncture [37], electric moxibustion [29], and P-Stim, a form of auricular electroacupuncture [32].
(2g) mfc: manufacturer; no mfc [35, 36, 40], material not mentioned [40].
(4b) All studies [27–35, 37–42], except [36] are conventional NIRS; N: NIRS, T: TCD, P: Pointselect (a tool to help identify acupuncture points), O: other; eeg: electroencephalogram, lds: laser Doppler spectroscopy, and icg: indocyanine green perfusion imaging (an application of NIRS).