Efficacy and safety of low-intensity ultrasound therapy for myofascial pain syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) is a common pain disorder characterized by the presence of trigger points within the muscles or fascia. Low-intensity ultrasound therapy, as a noninvasive modality, has indeed found application in the management of MPS, but its efficacy for myofascial pain syndrome has still been controversial. The objective of this systematic review was to assess the safety and efficacy of low-intensity ultrasound therapy for MPS. METHODS: We searched PubMed, Embase, PEDro, Web of Science, and CENTRAL for RCTs on ultrasound therapy in MPS patients. We included RCTs comparing ultrasound with other therapies or placebo-sham ultrasound. Clinical outcomes included pain scores and physical functional performance. Risk of bias and heterogeneity were assessed. Two authors of the review independently evaluated the risk of bias of each trial and extracted the data. RESULTS: = 91%). Patients receiving low-intensity ultrasound had improved on pressure pain threshold. Compared with other treatments, there were no differences in outcomes functional scores. CONCLUSIONS: The current study indicates that low-intensity ultrasound effectively reduces pain intensity in MPS patients. The heterogeneity regarding the parameters of ultrasound, including frequency, intensity, time was found to be high among the included studies. Each therapeutic modality works differently in various situations and may lead to multitudinous effects. The positive impact of low-intensity ultrasound on functional improvement needs to be further analyzed through more high-quality clinical trials with large sample sizes in the future. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered on the following website: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/ . The PROSPERO registered ID is CRD42023472032.
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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 | 0.013 | 0.035 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.019 | 0.028 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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 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".