Developing a Core Outcome Set for Acupuncture for Migraine Based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Migraine is one of the most common chronic neurological disorders worldwide. Current clinical treatment mainly aims to relieve symptoms, and the outcome is primarily evaluated on subjective parameters with a lack of comprehensive and objective evaluation criteria. The development of a core outcome set (COS) may offer a solution to the problems with evaluating the outcome of treatments for migraine. A total of 57 outcome indicators were obtained from the systematic review and semi-constructed interviews. After the two-round Delphi survey and analytic hierarchy process were used to assess the weight of each outcome, 16 core outcomes of acupuncture treatment for migraine treatment were selected. The COS evaluates the degree of relief provided by acupuncture therapy in terms of pain level and symptoms and provides a comprehensive and multidimensional assessment of quality of life, sleep quality, and mental health from the perspective of pain and it presented here could guide the application and precise evaluation of treatment for migraine. Funding Statement: This research was funded by the National key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFC1707604) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81674150). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: Ethical approval was obtained from the ethics committee of Beijing university of Chinese medicine (Approval no. DZMEC-KY-2018-44).Written informed consent for publication of our research details was obtained from the patients.