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the shizzle => diet, training and injuries => Topic started by: Stu Littlefair on August 11, 2013, 06:15:51 pm

Title: Intrasound treatment for tendon injuries
Post by: Stu Littlefair on August 11, 2013, 06:15:51 pm

Following a very bad tendon injury this winter, a friend lent me a device which is basically a percussion massager, working at frequencies just below ultrasound. I was skeptical but gave it a go and was surprised to apparently see results.

Always wary of anecdata I had a look for research on the topic and couldn't find much. The only thing relevant was this study on rats tendons - https://www.dovepress.com/getfile.php?fileID=7337 (https://www.dovepress.com/getfile.php?fileID=7337)

It seems to look promising but it's beyond my level of expertise to make a decent critical appraisal of the paper. Does anyone with a better grasp of the clinical literature or physiology care to comment?

Title: Re: Intrasound treatment for tendon injuries
Post by: Dexter on August 12, 2013, 10:00:53 am

it looks like it has potnetial however I'd be skeptical about a couple of things with it.
1. they use a crushing mechanism to induce injury which may be different to the kind of injury occuring during climbing.
2. They measure cell counts not necessarily tendon recovery/strength etc.
3. The errors are a bit high and the +/- error of the treated group overlaps that of the untreated group.

Having said all of that it looks quite promising I think for climbing purposes a slightly different injury mechanism would be good and bigger groups to decrease error.