Explanation of issues in “Is scalp-based acupuncture and moxibustion better than conventional rehabilitation therapy for children with cerebral palsy’ from the readers?”
We are glad that our study (1) provided at least some useful information. For the issues mentioned in the article by Feng et al. (2), our answers are listed below.
First, for the search databases, we selected only 1 English database, PubMed, and 3 Chinese databases for the literature. We did not included Scopus, Cochrane, WOS, because we noticed the topic of this article is all about an external treatment of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is seldom reported in English language databases. So, we presumed that PubMed is fully enough to cover all the English articles about this topic. Basically, we found 0 articles in English database in the end.
Also, we used a free keyword mode for the search process, the keywords have been provided in the text. It is a broad range search strategy which would cover all the articles.
Second, PROSPERO registration is not strictly required based on the PRISMA guideline. We did not register our review on PROSPERO or Cochrane due to time limit, which is kind of an omission for our workflow. However, that will not change the results of this meta-analysis.
We did not provide a Jadad score in Tab. 1, but we assess the quality of the studies with Cochrane RoB 2.0 published in 2016, which provided more detailed items to assess the risk of bias for the randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies. Please check Fig. 3 for the overall risk of bias for each study.
Third, we did perform sensitivity analysis in the section “Sensitivity analysis”. Please check on that.
For the publication bias, the number of included studies is 10, a funnel plot could display the bias more clearly. However, we should have used Begg’s or Egger’s test for more accuracy.
Acknowledgments
Funding: None.
Footnote
Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Translational Pediatrics. The article did not undergo external peer review.
Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://tp.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/tp-2022-02/coif). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
References
- Xue Y, Shi S, Zheng S, et al. Therapeutic effect of scalp-based acupuncture and moxibustion as an adjunctive treatment on children with cerebral palsy comparing to conventional rehabilitation therapy: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Transl Pediatr 2022;11:631-41. [Crossref] [PubMed]
- Feng QB, Liu XY, Ren QP, et al. Is scalp-based acupuncture and moxibustion better than conventional rehabilitation therapy for children with cerebral palsy. Transl Pediatr 2022; [Crossref]
