ObjectivesTo systematically review the efficacy and safety of local endometrial mechanical stimulation in patients with recurrent embryo implantation failure in vitro fertilization.MethodsPubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP databases were electronically searched to collect clinical controlled studies on the efficacy and safety of local endometrial mechanical stimulation in patients with recurrent embryo implantation failure from inception to March 2018. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies, then, meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 software.ResultsA total of 10 studies, including 8 randomized controlled trials and 2 case-control studies, and involving 1 274 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: the clinical pregnancy rate of endometrial mechanical stimulation group was higher than that of control group (RR=1.40, 95%CI 1.04 to 1.89, P=0.03). However, no significant differences were found in implantation rate (RR=0.75, 95%CI 0.50 to 1.13, P=0.17), live births rate (RR=1.38, 95%CI 0.99 to 1.93, P=0.06), miscarriage rate (RR=0.83, 95%CI 0.55 to 1.24, P=0.36) and rate of multiple pregnancy (RR=0.90, 95%CI 0.61 to 1.35, P=0.63).ConclusionCurrent evidence shows that, for patients with repeated implantation failure, mechanical endometrial stimulation before re-transplantation may help to improve the clinical pregnancy rate of test-tube infants, however, it has no significant effects on implantation rate, live birth rate, abortion rate, multiple pregnancy rate and ectopic pregnancy rate. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are needed required to verify above conclusions.
Objective To analyze the efficacy and safety of different acupuncture methods on outcome of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET). Methods The PubMed, EMbase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, VIP, WanFang Data and CBM databases were searched to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) related to the objectives of the study from the inception to April 16, 2023. After two investigators independently screened the literature, extracted the data and evaluated the risk of bias of the included studies, a network meta-analysis was performed using Stata 16.0 software. Results There were 62 trials total with 9844 patients, involving 7 interventions. Network meta-findings analysis revealed the following: ① Clinical pregnancy rate (CPR): needle warming > auricular acupressure > transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) > electroacupuncture > acupuncture > sham acupuncture > no adjunctive treatment; ② Live birth rate (LBR): electroacupuncture > auricular acupressure > TEAS > acupuncture > sham acupuncture > no adjunctive treatment. Conclusion Needle warming assisted IVF-ET is superior to other acupuncture therapies in improving CPR, especially during the promotion period of excretion, and the selection of Zusanli, Guanyuan and uterine acupoints for 3-month cycles may have the best effect. And for the LBR, the effect of electroacupuncture is better than that of other therapies. Besides, auricular acupressure may have good therapeutic potential. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are required to verify the above conclusions.