Vytautas Juzėnas, Dovilė Naruševičiūtė, Raimondas Kubilius
Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (Department of Rehabilitation), Kaunas, Lithuania
ABSTRACT
The Achilles tendon is the toughest tendon in the human body. A frequent cause of foot dysfunction is tendinopathy, which affects quality of life by provocing movement disorders (i.e. walking, running issues). Although there is no gold standard for tending of this affliction, inaccurate and inadequate treatment of this disorder prolongs the recovery time, worsens the outcomes. Lately, scientific studies have been conducted on treatment using laser and shockwave therapy. The main objective of this systematic review of literature is to analize the effectiveness of these two methods in treating Achilles tendinopathy. The Scientific literature research was performed utilizing Pubmed, Cochrane library, Science direct and Scopus database articles. 1149 research articles from 2017, December 2nd to 2018, January 15th were detected, yet only full text articles in the English language regarding the treatment of Achilles tendinopathy using laser or shockwave therapy on people were included in this review. This limited the search to 11 studies which were analized. This reviewed and summarized literature implies that laser or shockwave therapies are effective treatment options when lowering the pain levels and tending movement issues for patients with Achilles tendinopathy.
Keywords: laser therapy, extracorporeal shockwave therapy, Achilles tendinopathy, Achilles tendinitis, Achilles tendinosis.