World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies Clinical Practice Guideline on Acupuncture-Moxibustion: Non-Specific Low Back Pain recommendation summaries

Clinical Practice Guideline on Acupuncture and Moxibustion: Nonspecific low back pain was revised and released by the Standards Working Committee of World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies (WFAS) on October 9, 2023. This is the first clinical practice guideline (CPG) on acupuncture and moxibustion for nonspecific low back pain approved by an international academic organization, which provides the evidence-based recommendations and practical therapeutic protocols for international acupuncture practitioners. This CPG was developed by following Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology, and the Principles of the World Health Organization Handbook for Guideline Development. The guideline development group (GDG) from different countries, with different professions, played a critical role in the formulation of clinical questions, recommendations, and therapeutic protocols. Recommendations are the key content of a CPG and the direct answers to clinical questions. Hence, this article focuses on the recommendations of this CPG. The recommendations were formulated using the modified Delphi method and the GRADE grid rules, based on the updated systematic reviews of clinical evidence. A total of seven recommendations for ten clinical questions were formulated in this CPG, including one conditional recommendation for either the intervention or the comparison based on very low quality of evidence, and six conditional recommendations for the intervention based on very low quality of evidence.