New Study: "Comparison of peritendinous hyaluronan injections versus extracorporeal shock wave therapy in the treatment of painful Achilles tendinopathy: A randomized clinical efficacy and safety study."

Dr Nils Lynen et al. has recently published a new study comparing two treatments of painful Achilles tendinopathy: OSTENIL® TENDON injections and extracorporeal shock wave therapy. 

Here's a quick quote of the Results and Conclusion:

RESULTS: HA treatment provided a clinically relevant improvement in Achilles midportion tendinopathy. A large superiority of the HA-group, compared to ESWT application, was observed for percent change in pain (VAS) and this superiority was proven to be statistically significant (Mann-Whitney statistic (MW) = 0.7507 with p = 0.0030 lower than required alpha = 0.025 significance level one-sided; Mann-Whitney-U test) at 3 months post-treatment. Similar findings for HA were also observed at 4 weeks (MW = 0.6425, p = 0.0304) and 6 months (MW = 0.7172, p = 0.0018). Advantage of HA treatment was confirmed by VISA-A, CGI and clinical parameters. Ten adverse events, 4 in HA-group and 6 in ESWT-group were reported, but none were classified as serious.  CONCLUSIONS: Two peritendinous HA injections showed greater treatment success in Achilles midportion tendinopathy compared to standard ESWT.

 

The full abstract can be viewed here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27639439