Efficacy of Salvia miltiorrhiza injection combined with steroids in the treatment of oral submucous fibrosis: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Abstract

BACKGROUND: This study was performed to systematically review the efficacy of Salvia miltiorrhiza injection combined with steroids in the treatment of oral submucous fibrosis. METHODS: We searched 9 databases: Web of Science, PubMed, Medline, EBSCO, Embase, The Cochrane Library, WanFang Data, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese Scientific Journals Full-text Database (VIP). Randomized controlled trials were collected to study the treatment of oral submucous fibrosis by S miltiorrhiza injection combined with steroids. Each database was searched from inception to November 2018. RevMan 5.3 software was used for the meta-analysis. RESULTS: In total, 13 randomized controlled trials involving 1190 patients were included. The results of the meta-analysis showed that compared with conventional treatment, S miltiorrhiza injection combined with steroids could significantly increase the maximal mouth opening [mean difference (MD), 0.23; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.16-0.30; P