BACKGROUND: Acupotomy and acupuncture are widely used in the clinical treatment of knee osteoarthritis in recent years. However, there remains no systematic review to assess the clinical effect. OBJECTIVE: To professionally assess the different effects of acupotomy versus acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis. METHODS: A computer-based search was conducted on the CNKI database, VIP database, Wanfang database, PubMed database and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (issue 3, 2011). The time limitation ran from the commencement of each database to September 15, 2011. Randomized controlled trials of acupotomy in the treatment group and acupuncture in the control group were included. Data were extracted and evaluated by two reviewers independently. RevMan5.1 software was used for Meta analysis after the literatures were evaluated. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: A total of 8 trials involving 654 patients were included. The Meta analysis showed that both curative rate and total effective rate of acupotomy for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis are higher than those of acupuncture in short term. It showed effects as follows respectively: OR 4.27, 95%CI 2.32 to 7.85; OR 3.01, 95%CI 1.77 to 5.14. Acupotomy is more effective than acupuncture in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis in short term. However, due to low quality of included studies and there are no reports on the adverse events, further well-designed randomized controlled trials with high quality are still needed to evaluate the beneficial effects of acupotomy.

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