The challenge of shoulder pain

Vissarakis G., Charamidis N.
Energy for Health [05], 2010

Shoulder pain (SP) constitutes a major medical, social, and economic challenge. 20% of the general population will suffer SP at least once in their lifetime. Many therapeutic techniques and modalities are used to treat SP. Rehabilitation practice should utilize a problem-oriented approach to direct treatment. However numerous factors make this difficult. Consequently the patient tends to return to the clinical practice complaining about persisting symptomatology. A review of the literature has revealed lack of evidence based work for the treatment of SP. This project has been conducted to address the issue of treating non-specific SP with the use of a new modality the HILT. 31 subjects suffering non-specific SP have taken part to this project. The participants have been treated with the HILT (Nd:YAG laser Hiro 3.0) device with the standard hand piece for the pain therapy, according to a specific protocol. The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pain score (climax of 10) was used to evaluate the subjective pain symptomatology prior and after the treatment application. The satisfaction index has also been evaluated at the end of the therapy. The mean values ±SD have been used for the statistical analysis. The results revealed a great reduction of the subjective pain to all individuals. The level of satisfaction was also measured very high at the end of the treatment. The study has confirmed that the Hilterapia® has shown good results regarding the improvement of SP and the level of patient satisfaction, when applied at individuals with non-specific SP.