Objective  To conduct a systematic review of the clinical effect of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hot compress on patients with lumbar disc herniation (LDH).

Methods  Clinical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on TCM hot compress intervention with LDH were searched from CNKI, CBM, Wanfang Data, VIP, PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane Library and other Chinese and English databases from the year of inclusion to October 30, 2021 to select the literature meeting the requirements, and Meta-analysis of the efficacy was performed using RevMan 5.3 software.

Results  Twelve studies with a total of 1 268 patients were included, with 634 patients in both of the experimental and control groups. Meta-analysis showed that compared with the control group, treatment of LDH with TCM hot compress in the experimental group can significantly improve the total effective rate in clinical practice [RR=1.20, 95%CI(1.14,1.25), P<0.001] and the treatment score of Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) evaluation [MD=2.84, 95%CI(2.31,3.38), P<0.001]; visual analogue scale (VAS) score was significantly lower than that of the control group [MD=-2.26, 95%CI(-3.10, -1.43), P<0.001].

Conclusion  The intervention of LDH by TCM hot compress can significantly improve the total clinical effective rate, relieve the pain of the waist and leg, further improve the quality of life and relieve the psychological burden of the patients. However, the quality of the included studies is low and the size of the sample data is limited. In the future, it is necessary to improve the quality level of the trial design and sample content, and strengthen the clinical evidence.

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