In patients with chronic pelvic pain, acupuncture intervention may show favorable effects on pain management, even when used as a monotherapy.

A systematic review and meta-analysis examined the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating chronic pelvic pain (CPP) in comparison to a control group.

To assess the effectiveness of acupuncture for CPP, the randomized controlled trial articles on CPP in Embase and PubMed databases were reviewed. The National Institutes of Health—chronic prostatitis symptom index (NIH-CPSI) and total pain ratings on the visual analogue scale/numerical rating scale (VAS/NRS) were used as outcome factors. For the meta-analysis, post-intervention mean values were extracted and pooled.

For the meta-analysis, 17 papers with 1455 individuals were chosen. Both VAS/NAS and NIH-CPSI statistics on overall pain scores showed that the acupuncture group experienced significantly less pain than the control group. Furthermore, acupuncture monotherapy illustrated a considerably reduced pain level when compared to the control group in terms of VAS/NRS and NIH-CPSI.

For CPP, the acupuncture group exhibited less pain levels than the control group, as estimated by  VAS/NRS and NIH-CPSI.