Heat-sensitive Moxibustion Self-administration in Patients in the Community With Primary Hypertension: Protocol for a Multi-center, Pragmatic, Non-randomized Trial

Primary hypertension is a global health issue with high incidence; it affected approximately 1.13 billion people worldwide and directly or indirectly causing an 10.4 million of death yearly. The routine drugs for primary hypertension are limited by adverse effects and expensive costs. Therefore, complementary and alternative medicine with good efficacy and safety and low expenditure is still needed for primary hypertension, especially in poverty-stricken areas.

Heat-sensitive moxibustion is an innovative therapy developed on the basis of traditional moxibustion. Compared with traditional moxibustion, heat-sensitive moxibustion advocates finding heat-sensitive acupoints where patients have special reactions to moxibustion heat, including diathermy, heat transfer, soreness, etc. The application of moxibustion on heat-sensitive acupoints (i.e., heat-sensitive moxibustion) has been shown to be more effective to traditional moxibustion for many diseases, including primary hypertension. Moreover, compared with acupuncture, heat-sensitive moxibustion has a main advantage that moxibustion does not require professional qualifications and patients can self-administer moxibustion after professional training. However, the current evidence is generated only from hospital settings. Therefore, this study is specifically designed to investigate whether heat-sensitive moxibustion self-administration is an effective intervention for lowering blood pressure and improving quality of life for patients with primary hypertension in community setting.