Development of clinical questions and outcomes on Clinical Practice Guideline of Fire Needling Therapy for Herpes Zosters

To develop the clinical questions and outcomes of Clinical Practice Guideline of Fire Needling Therapy for Herpes Zosters based on Norms of Formulation and Evaluation for the Clinical Guideline on Acupuncture and Moxibustion released by World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Societies.

Combined the investigation with expert consultation and consensus method, and taken clinicians (members) of Chinese Association of Acupuncture and Moxibustion as the subjects, the clinical questions concerned were collected and the two-round consultation was conducted among expert group by letter. In the first round questionnaire, using the voting method, the relevant clinical questions in intervention measures were collected; and in the second round, with the Delphi method adopted, the importance of clinical questions and outcomes in the investigation was scored.

A total of 200 structured clinical questions proposed by 153clinicians and the clinical experience with 13 kinds of combined therapies involved and fire needling as the key measure were collected. The authority coefficient (Cr) of the Delphi questionnaire was＞0.70, and the coefficient of variation for the importance scores of alternative clinical questions and outcomes was 0.06-0.26 and 0.12-0.47, respectively. The top 10 clinical questions and 12 outcomes (6 outcomes referred to the patients either in the acute stage or the post-neuralgia stage) were included, with the importance score of clinical questions＞4, the importance score of outcomes＞6, and the coefficient of variation ≤0.25.

The clinical questions and outcomes of Clinical Practice Guideline of Fire Needling Therapy for Herpes Zosters are formulated, which provides the research basis for the recommendation development of the guideline.