2.2. Study design and population
chronic pain, pain
CHRONIC PAIN
This study aims to investigate the efficacy and safety of moving cupping therapy for chronic pain using a parallel-arm RCT. The target population will consist of patients with CLBP who have experienced pain for at least 12 weeks. The study will be conducted at the outpatient clinics of the Pusan National University Hospital and Korean Medicine Hospital.To ensure blinding, the study will include only patients with CLBP who have no prior experience with moving cupping. The study will be conducted by independent practitioners, with one performing the moving cupping treatment and the other evaluating SWE independently. Each treatment will be administered 4 times (twice a week, for 2 weeks), and a follow-up evaluation will be conducted 1 week later.This study was designed as a superiority trial with a level of significance set at α = 0.05, a type II error (β) of 0.2, and a power of the test of 80%. The sample size was calculated based on similar studies,