The effectiveness of extracorporeal shockwave treatment in subacromial impingement syndrome and its relation with acromion morphology

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the extracorporeal shock wavetherapy in the subacromial impingement syndrome and its relationship with the acromionmorphology.Methods: Thirty patients (24 women, 6 men) with subacromial impingement were evaluated. Theaverage age of patients was 53.6± 9.8 years (range 39e80). Patients were divided into 3 groups according to the acromion morphology. ESWT 1500 at 0.12 am mL/mm2violence was applied once a weekfor 3 weeks. Shoulder pain and disability index (SPADI) was used to assess function and pain scores of thepatients. The evaluations were made prior to and 12 weeks after the ESWT.Results: Thirteen shoulders had type 1 acromion, 11 shoulders type 2 acromion and 6 shoulders type 3acromion. After ESWT, the SPADI pain score decreased from 16.1± 5.1 (7e25) to 10.4 ± 4.9 (1e20); SPADIfunctional score decreased from 37.3± 19.8 (5e70) to 26.7 ± 17.5 (1e60); SPADI total score decreasedfrom 53.4± 24.5 (14e95) to 37.1 ± 21.6 (2e74) (p < 0.05; paired t test). In each group better functionaloutcomes were achieved after ESWT (p< 0.05; paired t test). There were no differences between thegroups according to functional outcome both before and after the ESWT treatment (p> 0.05, one wayANOVA test).Conclusion: ESWT was found to be effective in the treatment of impingement syndrome both for painand functional outcome in the early period regardless of acromion morphology.Level of evidence: Level IV, Therapeutic study.© 2017 Turkish Association of Orthopaedics and Traumatology. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This isan open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).