The Effectiveness Of Radial Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy In Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Prospective, Randomized, Single-Blinded Pilot Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Karolina Walewicz,1 Jakub Taradaj,2,3 Katarzyna Rajfur,1 Kuba Ptaszkowski,4 Michał Tomasz Kuszewski,2 Mirosław Sopel,5 Robert Dymarek5 1Faculty of Physiotherapy, Opole Medical School, Opole, Poland; 2Institute of Physiotherapy and Health Sciences, Academy of Physical Education, Katowice, Poland; 3College of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada; 4Department of Physiotherapy, Wroclaw Medical University, Wroclaw, Poland; 5Department of Nervous System Diseases, Wroclaw Medical University, Wroclaw, PolandCorrespondence: Robert DymarekDepartment of Nervous System Diseases, Faculty of Health Sciences, Wroclaw Medical University, Bartla 5, Wroclaw 51-618, PolandTel +48 71 784 18 05Fax +48 71 341 95 33Email r.dymarek@gmail.comPurpose: This prospective, randomized and single-blinded study assesses the influence of radial extracorporeal shock wave therapy (rESWT) in patients with low back pain (LBP).Methods: A total of 52 patients with LBP were enrolled in the study, out of which a homogeneous group of 40 patients with mean age of 53.45±4.9 years was included. Patients were randomized into group A (n=20) treated with rESWT (2000 pulses; 2.5 bars; 5 Hz, 7 mins) performed twice a week for five weeks (10 sessions) and stabilization training, as well as group B (n=20) treated with sham rESWT and stabilization training. To analyze the therapeutic progress, the following tests were performed (before and after therapy; 1 and 3 months follow-up) to assess pain and functional efficiency: (1) Visual Analog Scale (VAS), (2) Laitinen Pain Scale (LPS), and (3) Oswestry Disability Index (ODI).Results: The control group had a statistically significant advantage over the rESWT group (4.4 vs. 3.1 points on the VAS; p=0.039). However, in long-term observations, group A gradually experienced more pain relief than group B (2.7 vs. 3.5 points, p>0.05, at one month and 2.0 vs. 4.4 points at three months after treatment; p<0.0001). Similar findings can be seen in the analysis of changes in pain sensations measured with the LPS. The functional state (ODI) was better in rESWT group, especially in follow-up observation (9.3 vs. 14.6 points, p=0.033, at one month and 9.3 vs. 17.8 points, p=0.004, at three months after treatment).Conclusion: The rESWT combined with stabilization training is particularly effective in the long-term and achieves a stable beneficial effect for patients with LBP. The use of rESWT has a significant long-term influence on the reduction of pain and the improvement of the general functional state in relation to the conventional motor improvement program.Keywords: shock waves, ESWT, low back pain, functional state, physical therapy
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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 | 0.011 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".