Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy is a non-invasive treatment that assists with the body’s natural healing process. It involves sending shockwaves through your skin towards the painful/affected/damaged tissue.
Shockwave therapy uses high-energy acoustic waves to target and stimulate the body’s healing process, thereby promoting recovery and remodelling of damaged/dysfunctional tissues. The treatment produces an inflammatory response which increases metabolic and circulatory activity. ESWT aids in the breakdown of scar tissue and calcification and can also stimulate pain relief through neural mechanisms (reduction of nerve signals to the brain).
Some soreness and pain may occur as ESWT initiates an inflammatory reaction in the tissues. You may experience some side effects after treatment including skin redness, bruising, haematoma, localised red spots and numbness. All of these should resolve in a few days prior to your next treatment. There is a small risk of tendon/ligament rupture and soft
tissue damage.
Treatment duration and intensity vary depending on the condition being treated and the patient’s response. Treatments should last no longer than 15 minutes, dependent on pain severity and history of the condition. Patients should expect to attend 3-5 sessions and for best results treatment should be no further apart than weekly.
ESWT is a highly effective treatment for chronic tendon disorders and is widely used in practice. Research demonstrates a 70-80% success rate across a vast range of conditions. It may not work for everyone, but it helps most people when other conservative treatments have failed.
A randomised controlled study by Yang et al. [1] on tennis elbow showed that Radial Shock Waves Therapy® combined with physical therapy enables better and faster pain reduction, grip strength increase, functional improvement and tendon tear healing than physical therapy alone. A significant pain reduction of 65% was observed in the combined therapy group – more than 2x higher than in the control group.
Another study from Zhao et al. demonstrated that RSWT® enables a significant reduction in pain and improvement in knee function after 3 months in patients suffering from osteoarthritis. An almost 50% reduction in pain (as measured on the VAS pain scale) was observed in the study cohort versus 15% in the placebo group [2].
Ask your chiropractor for more information about Shockwave Therapy and/or discuss if it may assist your condition/s.
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REFERENCE
1.Yang, Tsung-Hsun et al. “Efficacy of Radial Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy on Lateral Epicondylosis, and Changes in the Common Extensor Tendon Stiffness with Pretherapy and Posttherapy in Real-Time Sonoelastography: A Randomized Controlled Study.” American journal of physical medicine & rehabilitation vol. 96,2 (2017): 93-100.
2. Zhao, Zhe et al. “Efficacy of extracorporeal shockwave therapy for knee osteoarthritis: a randomized controlled trial.” The Journal of surgical research vol. 185,2 (2013): 661-6
