Role of extracorporeal shockwave therapy in patients with rotator cuff tendinopathy: synthetic analysis of last two decades.

OBJECTIVE: To explore current evidence on the effectiveness of shockwave therapy in patients with rotator cuff tendinopathy. METHODS: The meta-analysis study was conducted at University of Lahore from May 2019 to December 2019 and comprised search on Cochrane, Medline, Embase, Physiotherapy Evidence Databasedatabases and other sources as well as unpublished grey literature related to shockwave therapy in patients with rotator cuff tendinopathy published between 2000 and 2019. Methodological quality assessment was performed using Cochrane risk of bias tool and the included studies were critically appraised using the Physiotherapy Evidence Databasescale. RESULTS: Of the 11 studies shortlisted, data was not extractable from 2(18%). Of the 9(82%) studies analysed, 8(89%) were randomised trials and 1(11%) was randomised pilot study. Overall, 4(44.4%) studies had high quality and 5(55.6%) fell in the fair category. CONCLUSIONS: There was no consensus found on the efficacy of extracorporeal shockwave therapy compared to traditional rehabilitation among patients with rotator cuff tendinopathy.