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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2009 Sep 15:339:b3360.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.b3360.

Radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment compared with supervised exercises in patients with subacromial pain syndrome: single blind randomised study

Kaia Engebretsen  1 , Margreth Grotle, Erik Bautz-Holter, Leiv Sandvik, Niels G Juel, Ole Marius Ekeberg, Jens Ivar Brox
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment compared with supervised exercises in patients with subacromial pain syndrome: single blind randomised study

Kaia Engebretsen et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment with that of supervised exercises in patients with shoulder pain.

Design: Single blind randomised study.

Setting: Outpatient clinic of physical medicine and rehabilitation department in Oslo, Norway.

Participants: 104 patients with subacromial shoulder pain lasting at least three months.

Interventions: Radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment: one session weekly for four to six weeks. Supervised exercises: two 45 minute sessions weekly for up to 12 weeks. Primary outcome measure Shoulder pain and disability index.

Results: A treatment effect in favour of supervised exercises at 6, 12, and 18 weeks was found. The adjusted treatment effect was -8.4 (95% confidence interval -16.5 to -0.6) points. A significantly higher proportion of patients in the group treated with supervised exercises improved-odds ratio 3.2 (1.3 to 7.8). More patients in the shockwave treatment group had additional treatment between 12 and 18 weeks-odds ratio 5.5 (1.3 to 26.4).

Conclusion: Supervised exercises were more effective than radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment for short term improvement in patients with subacromial shoulder pain.

Trial registration: Clinical trials NCT00653081.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

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Fig 1 Flow chart of study
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Fig 2 Mean shoulder pain and disability index scores with 95% confidence intervals for supervised exercises and radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment
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