A comparative study on the effects of systemic manual acupuncture, periauricular electroacupuncture, and digital electroacupuncture to treat tinnitus: A randomized, paralleled, open-labeled exploratory trial

Table 3 Changes in the VAS _loudness and VAS _{uncomfortable} scores

	Initial	Mid	End	Follow-up
VAS _loudness
MA (n = 21)	48.76 ± 22.06	46.38 ± 22.16	42.62 ± 25.26	43.38 ± 24.61
PE (n = 22)	54.45 ± 23.75	55.09 ± 21.33	53.59 ± 24.39	49.68 ± 23.09
DE (n = 22)	47.73 ± 20.32	45.55 ± 20.81	45.05 ± 22.72	45.00 ± 21.48
p-value	0.787	0.548	0.374	0.496
VAS _{uncomfortable}
MA (n = 21)	42.14 ± 29.87	40.95 ± 30.51	38.67 ± 29.36^a	36.67 ± 29.80^a
PE (n = 22)	59.14 ± 26.12	59.41 ± 22.11	58.68 ± 23.30^b	57.18 ± 24.56^b
DE (n = 22)	42.55 ± 25.78	40.27 ± 27.02	37.82 ± 24.43^a	42.73 ± 22.88^a
p-value	0.099	0.067	0.011*	0.028*

MA systemic manual acupuncture group, PE periauricular electroacupuncture group, DE distal electroacupuncture group, VAS visual analogue scale. All variables are expressed as mean ± standard deviation analyzed by one-way analysis of covariance considering THI score at baseline as covariate. A p-value < 0.05 was considered significant. Different letter superscripts in the same column indicate a significant difference (*p < 0.05, LSD post-hoc test)

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