Efficacy of Taiji imagery therapy in stroke patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: To explore the efficacy of Taiji imagery therapy (TIT), a combination of Taiji and imagery therapy, in treating stroke patients. Methods: Suitable studies for the meta-analysis were retrieved from 8 research databases: China National Knowledge Infrastructure, SinoMed, China Wanfang, Chongqing VIP Information, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and EMBASE (date of retrieval: October 26, 2024). Articles were searched manually and independently by 2 researchers. Other researchers evaluated the included articles using the modified Physiotherapy Evidence Database scale. Using STATA software (version 14.0) for data analysis, the combined effect size was used to calculate forest plots, sensitivity analysis was used to explore the source of heterogeneity, and Egger test was used to detect publication bias. Results: The literature-based meta-analysis included 422 stroke patients from 7 studies. The findings revealed that TIT significantly increased upper limb motor function (mean difference [MD] = 2.88, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.33–3.44, P < .001, I 2 = 0%), lower limb motor function (MD = 3.98, 95% CI: 0.45–7.52, P = .027, I 2 = 95.1%), and activities of daily living (MD = 10.65, 95% CI: 3.82–17.49, P < .001, I 2 = 95.0%). The sources of heterogeneity can be explained by the frequency, time, and duration of the study. No publication bias was observed in this study. Conclusions: TIT positively affected upper limb motor function, lower limb motor function, and activities of daily living in stroke patients. In future, we aim to include TIT in randomized controlled trials of the same type to increase the overall number of studies.