Immediate efficacy of low-intensity focused ultrasound versus planar ultrasound in patients with myofascial pain syndrome of upper trapezius: a randomized controlled clinical trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Myofascial pain syndrome (MPS), a chronic musculoskeletal disorder characterized by myofascial trigger points (MTrPs), causes localized pain and dysfunction. The objective is to compare the immediate therapeutic effects of low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) versus low-intensity planar ultrasound (LIPU) on pain and function in upper trapezius MPS. METHOD: , 1 MHz, 5 min, once a day, 3 days). The primary outcome was pain severity, assessed immediately post-treatment using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS; 0 ~ 10 cm), and served as the central efficacy endpoint. Secondary outcomes comprised supplemental assessments including: (1) multidimensional pain characterization via the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ); (2) functional disability quantification through the Neck Disability Index (NDI); and (3) neuromuscular biomarkers measured by surface electromyography (sEMG) parameters (root mean square [RMS], median frequency [MF]). The outcomes were assessed before treatment and 10 min, 72 h after completing the third and final session of treatment. RESULTS: Pain intensity, as measured by the VAS, decreased significantly immediately after treatment in both the LIFU group (median difference [MD] = -2.0 cm; 95% confidence interval [CI]: -2.5 to -1.5 cm; p = 0.002) and the LIPU group (MD = -1.0 cm; 95% CI: -1.5 to -0.5 cm; p = 0.001), with these reductions maintained at 72 h post-treatment. Both SF-MPQ and NDI scores showed significant improvements following treatment in both groups. A significant reduction in RMS parameters was observed in the LIPU group immediately after treatment (MD = -15.3 µV; 95% CI: -20.0 to -10.5 µV; p = 0.028). No significant differences were observed between the groups in terms of pain alleviation, functional improvement, and alterations in neuromuscular electrophysiological activity (p > 0.05); however, moderate to large effect sizes suggest possible clinical relevance. No adverse events were reported. CONCLUSION: Both LIFU and LIPU can be considered effective therapeutic options, offering immediate symptom relief in patients with upper trapezius MPS. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The protocol was registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Register (ChiCTR2500097431) as a clinical trial on 19/02/2025 http://www.chictr.org.cn/ .
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".