Extracorporeal shockwaves therapy versus corticosteroid injection for the treatment of non-calcific rotator cuff tendinopathies: a randomized trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Rotator cuff tendinopathy is the most common cause of painful shoulder. There is evidence supporting the use of extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) in the rotator cuff calcific tendinopathy, but evidence supporting its use in non-calcifying tendinopathy is lacking. The current study aimed to compare the clinical effectiveness of corticosteroid injections versus ESWT until 3 mo of follow-up for the management of painful non-calcific rotator cuff tendinopathies. Methods: A total of 33 patients affected by painful rotator cuff tendinopathy were randomly divided into 2 groups of 16 and 17 cases. The first group received corticosteroid injection under ultrasound guidance and the second group received three sessions of shockwave within 3 consecutive weeks consisted of 2000 pulse energy, 5 Hz frequency, and pressure of 4 bar using a radial shock wave device. Two outcome measures of VAS and Quick-DASH were obtained to evaluate patients before treatment, and 2 and 12 wk after treatment. Discussion: Regarding both VAS and the score of the Quick-DASH questionnaire, no statistically significant difference was observed between these 2 therapeutic interventions (ultrasound-guided corticosteroid injection and shockwave). Both interventions reduced the patient’s pain to the same extent (P-value=0.955 for VAS, and P-value=0.865 for Quick DASH questionnaire score). Moreover, within-group changes showed that both groups’ improvements were significant in the time intervals of 1 to 2 and 1 to 3. Conclusions: Corticosteroid injection and radial shockwave, both can be effective to the same extent in reducing pain and improving function in non-calcific shoulder tendinopathy. Level of Evidence: Level I.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".