Patients who suffered from shoulder pain saw more relief and improvement in function from supervised exercises than they did with shockwave treatment, a Norwegian study found.
After 18 weeks, 64% of patients who performed supervised exercise achieved a reduction in shoulder pain and disability, compared to only 36% of those who underwent shockwave treatment (P=0.009), according to the online report in the Sept. 15 issue of BMJ.
The study also found that 76% of patients who exercised had returned to work after 18 weeks, compared with 52% of those in the shockwave treatment group (P=0.016).
"Supervised exercises were more effective than radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment for short-term improvement in patients with subacromial shoulder pain," Kaia Engebretsen, of Oslo's Ullevaal University Hospital, and colleagues concluded.
The researchers noted that the shoulder is the fourth most common area of musculoskeletal pain reported by patients to doctors and physical therapists. Such discomfort is often diagnosed as subacromial shoulder pain, also known as rotator cuff disease, impingement syndrome or rotator cuff tendinosis.
Common treatments include corticosteroid injections, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications and physical therapy, which encompass a range of techniques, including exercise and shockwave treatment.
Previous studies have suggested that shockwave treatment was not effective for relieving pain in patients with rotator cuff tendinosis, the authors wrote.
"Despite these findings, shockwave treatment is increasingly used for subacromial shoulder pain," they added. "To our knowledge, radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment has not been compared with exercises in a clinical trial including patients with shoulder pain."
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Orthopedics/Orthopedics/15973I would believe this..but the important word is SUpervised. The shoulder is one joint that it is so easy to injure when you overuse it or use it incorrectly