Efficacy and Safety of a Stimulator Using Low-Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound Combined with Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation in Patients with Painful Knee Osteoarthritis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: Studies regarding the combination of ultrasound and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) are rarely reported. In this study, we aimed to elucidate the efficacy and safety of a stimulator using low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) combined with TENS in patients with painful knee osteoarthritis (OA). We evaluated the effectiveness of this therapy against pain, physical function, and cartilage regeneration. Moreover, we aim to prove the superiority of the effects of LIPUS combined with TENS therapy compared with only TENS therapy. Methods: Of the 40 included patients, aged 45-85 years with painful knee OA, 20 patients received only TENS therapy and 20 patients received LIPUS combined with TENS therapy for 8 weeks (a total of more than 80 treatment sessions). We evaluated visual analogue scale (VAS), Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) osteoarthritis index, MOS 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), and femoral articular cartilage (FAC) thickness. The evaluation was performed at three visits: visit 1 (V1, pretreatment, within 28 days after screening), visit 2 (V2, posttreatment period 1, ±3 days after treatment), and visit 3 (V3, posttreatment period 2, 21 ± 3 days after treatment). Results: We expected that LIPUS combined with TENS therapy would be superior to only TENS therapy. However, there was no significant difference between the two therapies. In the within-group comparison, both treatments (only TENS therapy and LIPUS with TENS therapy) demonstrated statistical differences from baseline values for pain and physical function outcomes. FAC thickness showed no significant differences after treatment in both groups. Conclusion: The effects of a stimulator using LIPUS with TENS on pain relief and functional improvement were not superior to the only TENS therapy. Cartilage regeneration, which was expected as an additional benefit of LIPUS, was also not significantly evident. Therefore, further investigation is warranted to determine whether the combination therapy is beneficial. This trial is registered with KCT0003883.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".