Efficacy of Electrical Stimulators for Bone Healing: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Sham-Controlled Trials
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Electrical stimulation is a common adjunct used to promote bone healing; its efficacy, however, remains uncertain. We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized sham-controlled trials to establish the efficacy of electrical stimulation for bone healing. We identified all trials randomizing patients to electrical or sham stimulation for bone healing. Outcomes were pain relief, functional improvement, and radiographic nonunion. Two reviewers assessed eligibility and risk of bias, performed data extraction, and rated the quality of the evidence. Fifteen trials met our inclusion criteria. Moderate quality evidence from 4 trials found that stimulation produced a significant improvement in pain (mean difference (MD) on 100-millimeter visual analogue scale = -7.7 mm; 95% CI -13.92 to -1.43; p = 0.02). Two trials found no difference in functional outcome (MD = -0.88; 95% CI -6.63 to 4.87; p = 0.76). Moderate quality evidence from 15 trials found that stimulation reduced radiographic nonunion rates by 35% (95% CI 19% to 47%; number needed to treat = 7; p < 0.01). Patients treated with electrical stimulation as an adjunct for bone healing have less pain and are at reduced risk for radiographic nonunion; functional outcome data are limited and requires increased focus in future trials.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.053 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.046 | 0.042 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it