Comparative study of functional outcome in patients of Achilles tendinopathy treated with eccentric exercises and shockwave therapy

Abstract

Achilles tendinopathy is a common clinical entity for which various modalities have been tried with variable results. This study was undertaken to compare the functional outcomes in patients of Achilles tendinopathy treated with eccentric exercises and shockwave therapy. 76 patients were included in the study and were randomly divided in two groups. Patients in Group 1 were treated with eccentric exercises and in Group 2 were treated with shock wave therapy.6 patients from Group 1 and 2 patients from Group 2 did not complete the duration of follow up and were excluded from the final analysis. Functional outcomes were evaluated using VAS scores and R-FFI scores at the start of intervention and at 6, 12 and 24 weeks. Patients in both groups showed significant improvement (p<0.01) across both the measures of outcome at each follow up visit. This indicated that both these modalities are effective in the treatment of Achilles tendinopathy. The difference in results was also significant (p<0.01) when patients in Group 1 were compared with those in Group 2 indicating that eccentric exercises delivered better functional outcomes than shockwave therapy.