🇨🇦 🇨🇦
February 15 is National Flag of Canada Day. PainScience is a proudly Canadian small business, selling e-books and other educational content about pain and injury since the mid-2000s. Read more about the project. Given Trump’s tariff bullying and threats to annex America’s greatest historical friend, ally, and trading partner, I think I’ll keep this flag up for the rest of the month… or perhaps permanently.
Detailed guides to painful problems, treatments & more

Does shockwave therapy lead to better pain and function than sham over 12 weeks in people with insertional Achilles tendinopathy? A randomised controlled trial

PainSci » bibliography » Alsulaimani et al 2024
updated

One page on PainSci cites Alsulaimani 2024: Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work?

PainSci commentary on Alsulaimani 2024: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.

More shockwave data…more negativity! We didn’t much need another thumbs-down trial of this, but we got it anyway: radial shockwave versus sham in 76 people over 3 months, measuring primarily VISA-A scores

Result? “No evidence for between-group differences” at any time, for any outcome. 😕

There are some minor caveats for this trial:

~ Paul Ingraham

original abstract Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the efficacy of adding radial extracorporeal shockwave therapy or sham to exercise for people with insertional Achilles tendinopathy. DESIGN: A two-armed, parallel-group, explanatory, single-centre, randomised controlled trial within a superiority framework. SETTING: Private clinic. PARTICIPANTS: People diagnosed with insertional Achilles tendinopathy who were over 18 years old with a symptom duration of greater than 3 months. INTERVENTION: A total of 76 people were randomly assigned (one-to-one ratio) to receive three sessions of radial extracorporeal shockwave therapy or sham to the affected side (or most affected side if bilateral). All participants received identical education and exercise. OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome was the Victorian Institute of Sports Assessment - Achilles questionnaire. Measures were recorded at baseline, 6 weeks and 12 weeks. RESULTS: At 12 weeks, the questionnaire data were available for 37 people (96%) in the radial extracorporeal shockwave therapy group and 36 people (95%) in the sham group. For the primary outcome, we found no evidence for between-group differences at 6 (3, 95% confidence interval -4.6-10.5) or 12 weeks (4.6, 95% confidence interval -2.5-11.6). There was also no evidence for a between-group difference for any secondary outcome measures at either 6 or 12 weeks (p > .05). No serious adverse events were reported. CONCLUSION: The addition of radial extracorporeal shockwave therapy to exercise and education did not lead to improvements in pain, function or other outcomes compared to sham at 6 or 12 weeks among people with insertional Achilles tendinopathy.ANZCTR Reg No: ACTRN12620000035921.

This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:

PainSci Member Login » Submit your email to unlock member content. If you can’t remember/access your registration email, please contact me. ~ Paul Ingraham, PainSci Publisher