Description:Background: With an incidence of 3%-5% in the general population and up to 20% in people with diabetes, peak
incidence of frozen shoulder is more common in women and in manual workers between the age of 40 and 60yrs.
Though multiple interventions have been studied on the frozen shoulder, the complete and the effective treatment is
indefinite. Nasya karma is one among the panchakarma therapies of Ayurvedic system of medicine which can deliver
the potential effects to the patients of frozen shoulder or apabahuka. Purpose: The objective of this study was to
review the case reports and case series that are published on nasya karma and apabahuka or frozen shoulder. Design:
Systematic review. Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE, Cochrane (CENTRAL), EMBASE, Google Scholar, TKDL, AYUSH and
DHARA databases were screened from inception until March 8th, 2020. References of the full text articles were
screened and selected articles by searching manually as a next step. Based on the pre-specified inclusion criteria articles
were screened and finally 5 case reports and 0 case series were included for the study. Results: All the 5 studies
included in the review administered nasya karma to the patients suffering from apabahuka or frozen shoulder and
assessed pain, severity of the pain, VAS (visual analogue scale), stiffness, ROM (Range of movements) like flexion,
extension, abduction, adduction, internal rotation and external rotation, forward elevation, lateral elevation, restricted
movements and constant assessment scale of shoulder joint before and after the treatment which showed significant
improvement in all the parameters. Conclusions: Nasya karma, one of the panchakarma therapies in Ayurvedic system
of medicine constitutes the prime modality of treatment in the management of jatru-urdhwagata rogas mainly
apabahuka or the frozen shoulder. Though present review showed significant changes in all the parameters, there are
several limitations besides the quality of reporting, that is generally low in the included case reports. In addition, this
review provides a comprehensive knowledge that may assist the researcher as a supplementary by giving an intuition
for the execution of RCT’s and clinical studies further on the domain studied. Having negligible number of systematic
reviews in Ayurveda and absence of systematic reviews on case studies or reports and series, this review may serve as a
preliminary step towards conducting more systematic reviews in Ayurvedic system of medicine which is the need of
hour..