Local and systemic cardiovascular effects from monochromatic infrared therapy in patients with knee osteoarthritis: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study

Light-emitting diode photobiomodulation therapy for non-specific low back pain in working nurses: A single-center, double-blind, prospective, randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Low back pain (LBP) affects approximately 51% to 57% of hospital nurses and nurses' aides in Europe. New high-risk groups include home- and long-term-care nurses and physiotherapists. A number of European countries are experiencing a shortage of healthcare workers. Light therapy has been shown to be an effective treatment for various musculoskeletal disorders, including lateral epicondylitis, temporomandibular joint pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and delayed-onset muscle soreness. A systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrated that low-level laser therapy is an effective method for relieving non-specific chronic low back pain (NSCLBP). However, the efficacy of light-emitting diode (LED) therapy for NSCLBP is disputed. This study aims to evaluate the effect of LED therapy on NSCLBP.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

We conducted a prospective, double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial of 148 patients with NSCLBP. The patients were randomly assigned to 2 groups: intervention group, where patients received LED photobiomodulation therapy 3 times a week for 2 weeks, and the sham group, where patients had sham therapy 3 times a week for 2 weeks. Primary outcome measures included the visual analog scale for pain, lumbar active range of motion assessments, and chair-rising times. Secondary outcome measures included a multidimensional fatigue inventory, fear-avoidance beliefs questionnaire, and the Oswestry disability index. The outcome measures were assessed before therapy and 2weeks, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks, and 6 months after the first interventions were completed.

DISCUSSION

This study is a prospective, single-center, double-blind, randomized, controlled study. This study aims to research the efficacy of a 2-week LED program for NSCLBP working nurse. Our results will be useful for patients, working nurses, nurses' aides, and other healthcare workers with chronic low back pain.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

NCT04424823.

Work-related outcomes in randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trials in osteoarthritis - are they adequately reported in journal publications? A systematic review

Background

Osteoarthritis (OA) has a high prevalence in Western societies and can affect an individual's life in a number of domains, including work. In our experience, treatment trials on OA, however, rarely report work-related outcomes. Here we conducted a systematic review to assess the reporting of work-related outcomes in randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trials in OA. Our systematic review also compared two search strategies for identifying eligible publications, one where work-related terms were included in the database search string (A) and one where this was not the case and work-related outcomes were identified by searches of full text Portable Document Formats (PDFs) (B). Search strategy A would conventionally be used and would only identify publications where work-related terms were mentioned in the title or abstract. Search strategy B presents the innovation of full text PDF searching and would identify publications were work-related terms were reported in the full text, regardless of whether they are mentioned in the title and abstract or not. We hypothesize that search strategy B identifies more relevant publications than search strategy A.

Methods

Electronic database searching was performed in Medline (Pubmed) from database inception to February 23, 2017 to identify peer-reviewed articles of randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled treatment trials in OA of the hand, hip, or knee, available as full-text PDFs. For search strategy A, search terms to identify work-related outcomes were included in the database search string, while search strategy B did not have these terms included in the database search string, but instead involved full text PDF searching. We included English language articles only and only those articles where searchable PDFs were available, to enable a comparison between search strategies A and B. Additionally, included studies also needed to report on pain intensity in relation to the work-related outcomes.

Results

Search strategy A yielded 50 hits combined for hand, hip or knee OA that mentioned some work-related concept in the title or abstract; 12 articles had to be excluded because they were not available as searchable PDFs. Screening of the remaining 38 articles resulted in only two articles that satisfied our inclusion criteria. Search strategy B yielded 986 hits, out of which 201 articles were excluded because searchable full text PDFs were not available. PDF full text searching and further screening resulted in 10 articles that were considered eligible for our review.

Conclusions

Work-related outcomes are rarely reported in journal publication on randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trials of hand, hip or knee OA. Searching full text PDFs yields more eligible articles than searching titles and abstracts only.