Clinical effectiveness of shockwave therapy in lateral elbow tendinopathy: systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of extracorporeal shockwave therapy compared with other interventions on pain, grip strength and disability in patients with lateral elbow tendinopathy. Data Sources: MEDLINE, PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, PEDro, ScienceDirect, Cochrane Library and clinical trial registries. Review methods: We included randomized controlled trials assessing the effectiveness of extracorporeal shockwave therapy alone or as an additive intervention compared with sham or other interventions. Pain intensity, grip strength and elbow disability were used as primary outcome measures. We assessed methodological quality with the PEDro score and quality of evidence with the GRADE approach. Results: Twenty-seven studies with 1871 patients were finally included. Extracorporeal shockwave therapy reduced pain intensity at mid-term follow-up (standardized mean difference: -1.21, 95% confidence interval:-1.53, -0.89, P < 0.001) and improved grip strength at very short- (mean difference:3.92, 95% confidence interval: 0.91, 6.94, P = 0.01) and short-term follow-up (mean difference:4.87, 95% confidence interval:2.24, 7.50, P < 0.001) compared with sham treatment. However, no clinically significant results were found between comparators in all outcomes and follow-up times. Extracorporeal shockwave therapy presented clinically better compared to Laser in grip strength at short-term (mean difference:3.50, 95% confidence interval:2.40, 4.60, P < 0.001) and ultrasound in pain intensity at very-short-term follow-up (standardized mean difference: -1.54, 95% confidence interval: -2.60, -0.48, P = 0.005). Conclusion: Low to moderate certainty of evidence suggests that there are no clinical benefits of extracorporeal shockwave therapy compared to sham interventions or corticosteroid injections. Based on very-low and moderate certainty of evidence, extracorporeal shockwave therapy outperforms against Laser and ultrasound, respectively.